


Vincit Qui Se Vincit

by Guede



Series: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell [6]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Angst and Humor, Crack Treated Seriously, Demon Hunters, Fallen Angels, Guilt, M/M, Magic, Miscommunication, Moral Dilemmas, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Sacrifice, Temporary Amnesia, Unrequited Love, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 12:35:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 53,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6006297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaká is a seminary student, and Lilian is a priest.  Together they fight demons, right up till Kaká screws up.  And then they see Figo, because that’s what you do when you screw up, and there’s some angel-demon drama like usual.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vincit Qui Se Vincit

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted in 2008.

Something touched Ricardo’s face, cool fingertips, and he thought it was his mother.

“No,” said someone quietly, just before they held a cup to his lips. Water, sweet water, washing over his cotton-coated tongue and down his parched throat.

It revived him, and he began to think. Then to flail, only to find his limbs prisoned in swathes of cloth, and he choked on the water. “Lilian—”

“He’s sleeping,” they said. They touched his face again and he calmed, and they helped him lie down. “Rest.”

Ricardo would have liked to refuse, but he had so little fight left in him. Still, he struggled to see, but the more he blinked, the darker the world grew. Till finally it was all dark, and he lost—had lost—and there was nothing.

* * *

The smell of food this time. It dragged claws through Ricardo’s gut so he curled in on himself and whimpered, only half-conscious of himself. He pressed his face into the rough cloth beneath and made them force up his head.

When the soft, sticky stuff brushed his lips, old fears spurred to life and he jerked away his head. He felt his mouth moving, his throat working, but later he couldn’t remember what he had said, or what they had said in reply. Only the sound of the voice, quiet and—and lean, not weak but no more than it needed to be. Sexless, almost, though it graveled and sometimes hesitated. Human, thought his instincts in the end, because demons never knew a lack of confidence, rooted as they were in the prideful fall, and so he let them feed him.

It hurt, working the stuff down his shattered throat. He had been screaming, screaming so much, when—no more silver bullets, no holy water, only his words and his dying voice. Some words escaped from him in between mouthfuls and they were not holy, but they only provoked a short laugh.

“Lilian,” he coughed.

“Resting.” The hand on his forehead again, calming him. “Rest.”

* * *

Sunlight tracking over the dusty floor, so warmly yellow that Ricardo irrationally tried to reach for one, but could move his hand no farther than the edge of his pallet. Coarse stuff, his blankets—he fingered the hem of one, then turned his head further and gazed at the unsmoothed floorboards just beyond his pallet, the equally rough wood that made up the walls. The window letting in the light had oil-paper over it, not glass, and the light came from the places where the paper had torn loose from its tacks.

Ricardo breathed, and smelled fresh grass, flowers. He frowned and rubbed his nose against his hand, trying to shake off the delusions of illness, and then smelled again. This time he did catch a hint of gasoline and trash, but overwhelmingly the air held natural fragrances and he didn’t hear the everyday noises of the slums. But perhaps no one had cared to return, with the slaughter that they would have found.

But then—Ricardo grew impatient with his musings and tried to sit up. He managed to turn onto his back and rise onto his elbows before his strength gave out, sudden and harsh like a puff of wind extinguishing a candle. He fell back with a gasp and the ceiling spun slowly above him once, twice, half a third time before he could bite back enough of the pain.

Something moved near the window and he turned his head, but the oil-paper permitted him to see only rough shapes. Shadows. A silhouette of someone turning away.

“Who—” Ricardo’s voice grated, tore out of disuse “—who—”

Whoever it was, they didn’t hear or stop. Their shadow rapidly disappeared below the sill till the last sliver was gone, and Ricardo was by himself in a strange place, with nothing to protect…his hand went to his neck and then he cursed upon finding nothing there.

And he apologized for that a bare second later, but with little grace and less feeling. His rosary, his—Ricardo shook his head, telling himself not to dwell on it. He had his life, and it appeared that he had all his limbs, and he remembered someone telling him that Lilian was still alive. There was no door to this room. There had to be one to the outside, and so there had to be more than one room.

Ricardo tried again to sit up, and all of his body shook but finally he did it. He swayed in place, gasping, feeling the sweat run down his back to soak into the bandages—he touched his chest and waist, then his arm. Then his right thigh. He’d have to find clothes, even though it was warm enough in the room so he didn’t feel their absence, he thought.

Now he could see the doorway just beyond the foot of his pallet. He re-examined himself, and though he hurt, he didn’t seem to be seriously incapacitated. It was merely a matter of ignoring the pain.

Easier said than done, admittedly, but by using the wall, Ricardo could drag himself on his hands and knees towards the door. His joints and limbs were stiff not only with injuries but also with lack of practice so it seemed like an eternity before he could curl his fingers about the jamb, and haul his head into the space.

He knew the building now, or rather, he knew the type: a squatter’s shack, thrown together wherever there was a little bit of uncontested ground. Behind him was the bedroom, probably, and now here was the rest of it, a scavenged crate with a hot-pan on it and faded boxes of rice below it for a kitchen. More crates for furniture, and on them, a blanket-draped form. It was motionless and the right length and Ricardo’s eyes stung.

But he didn’t _know_ , he told himself fiercely. He caught his breath, then crawled the rest of the way and heaved himself up to one of the crates at the end.

His hand was shaking so much that he dropped the sheet almost as soon as he picked it up, and so he saw nothing. Ricardo bit his lip and grabbed the sheet again, and exhaled in a fit of shock that had him sagging against the crate, barely hanging onto it by his fingernails.

Feet.

Only feet. Feet. _Feet_ —and Ricardo nearly was angry, inexplicably. But he shook his head, and gathered himself again, and was about to reach for the correct end when the form suddenly stirred. The far end of the sheet whispered, then slid away, and Lilian’s clear, lucid eyes looked back at Ricardo.

Then Lilian completed his roll onto his side, groaning and pressing at something on his arm, but Ricardo didn’t see precisely what because his eyes had blurred. He exhaled again, with all his power, and looked upward. “Praise God,” he breathed.

* * *

Three days later they’d checked themselves out of the clinic the local parish had checked them into, and were gingerly attempting a meal at one of the many streetside cafés that clustered on the outskirts of the town’s open-air market. Ricardo had been glad to be out again, for though the hellhounds seemed to have left, their master was still at large. But he couldn’t help but frown when Lilian removed his arm from his sling in an effort to better manipulate his tea-cup and –spoon.

“The bone is not broken,” Lilian serenely reminded Ricardo. Then he tipped his head towards Ricardo’s plate. “Your chicken, however, is rapidly cooling.”

Ricardo sighed and picked up his fork, but only to push a sliver of meat about his plate. “I don’t understand. Hellhounds do not simply abandon their hunts. And I know—I know—”

The tines of his fork clattered sharply against the rim of his plate, making Ricardo start. Then he looked to the side, but saw no one near, and finally realized he’d done that on his own and hadn’t been jostled. He turned back, but at the first glimpse of Lilian’s expression he retrieved his fork and grudgingly began to eat.

“I know we didn’t kill them all,” he eventually said. He hadn’t quite swallowed all of his last mouthful, and took a sip of water to clear his throat. “Nor would that have stopped their master from calling up more, and then there’s our unknown rescuer.”

Lilian hid the beginnings of his smile behind his cup. He was trying to be considerate, as usual. “You speak as if you wish he’d not intervened.”

“Don’t say such things,” Ricardo said irritably, before he could stop himself. He glanced up to Lilian’s face, then pressed his lips together as he cut off another fragment of chicken. The sawing motion started a pain in his ribs and he had to temporarily stop; he drank more water. “He?”

For the first time Lilian showed a trace of discomfort. He pushed himself further up in his chair, idly looking out at the passersby in the street. “That was careless of me. She, or they, as it may have been.”

“Are you sure you saw nothing?” Ricardo looked at the other man again, then put down his knife when he thought he sensed a slight stiffening in Lilian. He hated to push, he always did, but sometimes Lilian would hold too much to himself, as if he was the only one who had heard the call. There were few enough of them but there they were, and God would not have touched more than one if he’d believed they should work alone. “I know I did not, but—”

“You saw more than I did,” Lilian said, tone as smooth as his look at Ricardo was sudden. The dark tint of the lenses in his glasses didn’t disguise the sharpness of his gaze. “The last thing I remember was you. Your gun cocking.”

And the weight of Lilian against Ricardo. Blood running warmly down the skin under their clothes, only to chill when the unnaturally cold air had hit them. Always Ricardo had thought of heat and Hell and demons in the same breath, but that cold—he’d never felt anything like it.

He shook his head, clearing himself of the clinging shadows, and caught Lilian looking at him again, in that way of the man’s that never verged close enough to pity for Ricardo to be justly irritated. But all the same Ricardo didn’t wish to submit to it, or see much of a reason to: he disliked the memories, but it had been so close…and anyway, it had not been the first time he’d been in danger, and from hellhounds at that. And they were safe now, but others might still be at risk if they didn’t resume their work.

“I didn’t see anything,” Ricardo said, and then he stopped himself. That wasn’t accurate.

Lilian leaned forward, his head tilting in inquiry.

A shadow. It wasn’t quite nothing, but it told them just as much as nothing. Ricardo hadn’t been able to make out even the sex of it, or be sure that it was…he picked up his water-glass and put it between his hands, making an ‘o’ of his index fingers and thumbs about it. “I didn’t see them. And—and I don’t think I felt—I’m not sure, but I don’t _think_ —”

“I have gone back to the house, and saw no reason to believe they were anything but human,” Lilian said, calm and deliberate. As Ricardo stared sharply at him, Lilian put down his tea-cup and then reached for the pot. He began to grimace before his arm was fully stretched out, but looked a mild protest when Ricardo took up the pot first and refilled his cup. “Earlier this morning, when the doctor had you filling out our discharge forms.”

“You left?” Then Ricardo began to tuck down his head, but he stopped, thinking again. And he wasn’t ashamed of his curtness there, and so he looked back up. “Without telling me?”

Lilian laid his fingertips on the handle of his tea-cup but didn’t use them to lift the cup. He looked at Ricardo a while, and then he bowed his head. “I apologize. My thinking was, I cannot write—” he indicated his bandaged hand “—and there was something I wanted to see there, that had been nagging at me since I woke.”

“And you didn’t tell me,” Ricardo repeated. He took a deep breath, trying to reason through the sudden flare of anger, but only managed to make himself restless. His good hand was pulling at his hair before he’d realized it, and then he pushed himself back in his chair. “Lilian, they’ve not even sent someone to purify that street again. It was right in the middle of all of it, and even in daylight you can’t be sure—and you didn’t tell me.”

“I am sorry,” Lilian said, with genuine regret.

Ricardo wished to accept it. He knew he should, in keeping with the virtues that he strove to have govern his life, but he…he finally sighed, kicking at the loose gravel beneath their feet. Hellhounds, he reminded himself. “Well, what was it you were looking for?”

“I’m not quite sure.” And Lilian again looked sorry, and now a little chagrined as well. He picked up his cup but merely swirled it in one hand, looking into it. “It was only a half-thought, perhaps part of my fever…there was something when he was with us that I can’t quite recall.”

“You said ‘he’ again,” Ricardo said after a moment. He drew the hair out of his eyes—it’d grown a little long during their recovery, and should be cut before it seriously hampered him—and then pushed his half-eaten meal to the side. His physical appetite had gone. His arm-bandage was fraying, he saw, and he tried to tuck the strands back into his sleeve. “Lilian. I wasn’t—able—to fend off the hellhounds. So he must have. And no ordinary person could have done that.”

Lilian hummed thoughtfully and drank his tea, slow sip by sip. When he was done, he wiped his mouth with the side of a finger and then lowered his cup, still absently swirling it. “True, but we’ve run into those with gifts before.”

“What did you see?” Ricardo looked hard at the other man till Lilian met his eyes. “When you went back. What did you see?”

“Kaká—”

“What was there?” Ricardo demanded.

For a moment Lilian’s gaze deepened, and Ricardo felt almost reprimanded. But then the other man sighed, and abruptly upended his cup, bringing it down on its saucer with a sharp clatter that made others look at them. But Lilian did not move further, and one by one they looked away, till they were immersed in their own conversations and not paying attention as Lilian slowly lifted his cup, careful not to disturb the patterns of tea leaves that would have formed on the sides.

“Nothing.” Lilian tipped the interior of his cup towards him and glanced into it, then looked back at Ricardo. “Nothing. No one has come back to the street, though when I walked it, it felt and looked like any other. The stones are clean, the ice has melted, bodies have been taken away…I felt nothing.”

“Then it can’t be human. No human wouldn’t leave a trace, even someone powerful enough to turn away the hounds,” Ricardo muttered, twisting in his seat. “Even demons leave tracks…”

“‘He,’” Lilian remarked almost in passing. When Ricardo looked at him, the other man was gazing into his cup, but Lilian soon set that back on the saucer, right-side up. Then he signaled politely for the bill. “At any rate, I do not think that place holds any more clues for us. But when I was coming back, I did meet with a woman who told me that strange things have been happening in a neighboring town. Dead cattle, savagely torn apart and smelling of rotten eggs.”

The hounds again, most likely. Similar incidents had first brought them here. Lilian believed that their master had been originally motivated by no more than petty revenge, and had later lost control of the hellhounds when their thirst for blood refused to be quenched with animals. Perhaps that was the beginning of it, but privately Ricardo thought the horrific slaughter in the slums with no evidence of an attempt to warn anyone spoke of darker reasons.

“When are we leaving?” Ricardo asked.

The bill came and Lilian fumbled for his wallet, his normal grace marred by his injuries. He counted out the amount and then left a generous tip. “Tomorrow morning. For tonight I think we must stay here—we need to gather supplies, and the bishop’s man won’t arrive till nine tomorrow. Despite my reading of the street, I wouldn’t feel comfortable with leaving these people unprotected.”

As eager as Ricardo was, he could understand and agree with such reasoning. If the hellhounds were even intermittently out of control, then it couldn’t be counted on that they wouldn’t return to old hunting grounds. They were something like ordinary dogs in that respect.

“I hope you still don’t think you can persuade this one to give up their evil ways,” Ricardo said, getting up. He limped across to Lilian as quickly as he could, but had to lean over the man’s chair and catch his breath before he could help Lilian stand.

As Lilian stood, he gave Ricardo a concerned look. Then he began to ask, but Ricardo stepped back and started purposefully for the door, where he waited for the other man to catch up. Of course Ricardo was worried about their condition—they’d not proven a match for the hounds even when well—but if left alone the hellhounds would kill again, and there was no one else near who could take up the burden. And it might not be so difficult the second time: the first time, they’d been expecting much more minor demons, given the animal victims, and had been taken off guard.

“We shall see when we have the explanation for this. We still don’t understand what is happening.” Lilian paused to work his arm back into his sling before he strode out into the street. Then he had to step back, as two boys kicking a ball between them nearly ran into him. He watched them pass with a rueful smile. “I should call my cousin, and see how he’s doing. I haven’t heard from him since he signed with a club in France.”

“Innocents are dying, is what is happening.” But Ricardo looked at the boys as well, and then felt unaccountably embarrassed with Lilian gave him a quizzical look. “I could have been a footballer. I was good, when I was a child. Before I knew of my true gift.”

“Any gift is a true gift,” Lilian said gently, and then raised his good arm to hail a taxi.

* * *

The parish church gave them lodging, and offered them what supplies that could be found, which was dishearteningly meager. No spare silverware, only wooden crosses. Holy water in abundance, but only old soda bottles in which to put it. Lilian sprinkled some of it over a box of crackers he bought at a corner store rather than raid the church’s pitiful stock of the Host, and then despite his earlier demurral, sent Ricardo to purchase bullets.

They’d lost everything they’d had on them at the time of the attack, but fortunately they had left their luggage at the church before going in search of the demons. Nevertheless that was very little: extra clothing and other mundane items, Lilian’s Bible and Ricardo’s spare pistol, which was broken or else Ricardo would have taken that with him. After Ricardo had tried several shops, he finally found one he trusted to make an overnight repair. As for the bullets, he did buy some but they were cheap lead and he wasn’t certain that they would do much harm to a hellhound, even if doused in holy water.

Ricardo took a wrong turn on the way back, and was about to take another when a girl called to him from a window. When he stopped, she warned him against going down the ‘cursed’ road and he finally recognized where he was.

He had nothing more than himself and a borrowed rosary from the church. But it was high afternoon, and no matter their disagreements about Lilian’s judgment, Ricardo had been with the other man long enough to trust in Lilian’s abilities. So after he thanked the girl, he did not go down the cursed road because he doubted Lilian and wanted to see for himself. He believed the other man. But…something was bothering him. If Lilian could indulge in his curiosity, then he couldn’t object to Ricardo doing the same.

The street was as Lilian had described: abandoned and empty of life. Of all life, Ricardo gradually realized, as he walked down the uneven, cracked pavement and noticed the lack of birds, of rats, of even insects. In Brazil no speck of dirt was without some form of life, but here it was…the word ‘dead’ came into Ricardo’s mind and he shied from it, then half-consciously threw back his shoulders. It was an accurate label. Even the air was still, though barely a block away he’d been constantly pushing the hair from his eyes.

In such quiet, it didn’t take him long to find the shack again, built in the corner of a lot that had once housed a church and that still tingled of holiness to him. Here at least, the earth didn’t feel so eerily silent, although it was as free of living things as the rest of the street—Ricardo frowned. He’d remembered smelling grass and flowers, even though now that he thought about it, he hadn’t seen any.

He didn’t see any now as he walked across the small lot and up to the shack. Its door was wide open, and from a few yards outside of it Ricardo could see into both rooms, though he couldn’t make out every single corner. He glanced around himself, and then over his shoulder, despite not having heard a noise. Then he went inside.

But it was bare and felt of nothing more than the residual blessing the rest of the lot carried, and as Ricardo stepped out, he had to admit he was disappointed. He didn’t know what he’d expected to find, but he thought, _something_.

He sighed and tugged at his shirt. Then Ricardo looked up and across the lot was another man. No—not a man.

“Don’t,” he said, just as Ricardo’s hand had gone to his borrowed rosary. He showed his empty hands, then pointed to his feet, which were well within the borders of the lot. “I’ll stay here. I only want to speak with you.”

“I have nothing to say to your kind,” Ricardo said stiffly. He tried to judge the distance between him and the edge of the lot, between him and the demon, but already he knew it’d be too far, with his limp.

The demon smiled as if it knew what sadness was, and made a gesture with its hand. Then it looked up, blinking. “No, I wasn’t going to do anything. It’s only—I know, and you don’t have to speak to me. But I would like to suggest that you stay in town for a few days.”

“Why?” Ricardo asked. Then he inwardly scolded himself, for inviting talk only seemed to leave one more open to demons, in his experience.

“It would be better.” The demon half-turned, then looked at Ricardo again. Then he shook his head, as if disappointed, and walked away.

Ricardo heard his footsteps for quite a while in the stillness, and couldn’t bring himself to move till he thought the demon had nearly come to the street’s end. Then the thought that it would escape, and do harm to the people who still lived nearby, to the girl who’d warned Ricardo only an hour before—that spurred Ricardo to life.

He hurried as quickly as he could across the lot, but his body failed him: he began to breathe heavily after the first few steps, and then when he trod on a loose pebble, he could barely keep himself from falling. While he did manage to stagger on, the moment he reached the fence surrounding the lot, he collapsed against it, every muscle in him burning. His vision filled with black spots and his head swam so badly that he couldn’t continue, but instead had to lean and breathe.

Too slowly, he recovered. But as soon as he was able, he pulled himself up the fence to resume the chase, only to step on something again. It didn’t feel like a stone or a clod of dirt, and after Ricardo had righted himself, he looked down at it.

His rosary glinted up at him from the dirt. For a moment he stared at it, and then he dropped to disbelievingly touch it, tracing his fingertips over the worn silver, the familiar engravings—the demon.

Ricardo looked up, and then bundled the rosary into his hand as he strained all his senses, but he could find no trace of it. The street was as it’d been when he’d come.

* * *

“Then he seems harmless enough. Almost helpful, considering your rosary,” Lilian said.

“It didn’t kill anyone right then, but who knows what it’s done before. And besides, it asked me not to go—obviously it’s trying to protect its fellow kind in the next town.” The dirt had all come off easily enough, but those new scratches in the rosary would be too deep to buff away. It’d come through many dangers with Ricardo and was hardly flawless now, but it still pained him a little to see the new damage. One of the scratches cut straight across an engraved rose that he’d loved to trace as a child. “A bribe is not help, Lilian.”

For a few minutes Lilian continued to read his Bible, smoothing the crinkled vellum pages with his fingers. Then he turned, his chair creaking so Ricardo looked up to meet his eyes. “No, but I don’t think that that was the point. At least not the only point, Kaká.”

“What other point would a demon be making?” Ricardo snorted.

“Perhaps the point that he was returning your rosary.” Then Lilian grimaced. He twisted a little further about, rubbing his hand over his shoulder and then his neck, under the knot of the sling. “I think he was trying to show you he meant no harm, because he’d done no harm to you before.”

Ricardo frowned. “But I didn’t recognize it at all, even from the books.”

Lilian glanced up, then pressed his lips together as if amused, or frustrated. They frequently seemed to be the same thing to him. “We might have recognized him if we hadn’t been so badly injured. Or perhaps he had more of a hand in that than I could sense at the time…”

After another moment, Ricardo understood, and—and—he looked away, clutching the rosary. Then one of the ends began to dig into his palm and he looked at it, and an irrational urge to throw it out a window came over him. It soon passed, but he still couldn’t bring himself to a coherent reply. He pursed his lips, then rose and walked over to the bed, where he packed away the rosary. He’d finish cleaning it later; right now he still had the box of bullets to bless.

“Not all demons are motivated by violence,” Lilian said.

“No, of course there are many other sins in this imperfect world,” Ricardo muttered, jerking the bullets out of their bag. He returned to his table, but then realized the bottles of holy water were on the other wall, so he got up again. “Anyway, we’re still leaving tomorrow.”

On that Lilian didn’t raise an objection, although he continued to watch Ricardo move about with one of those near-irritating looks on his face. He took his arm out of its sling again, and began to unwrap the bandages on it.

“What did he look like?” Lilian asked.

Ricardo paused with his hand on the cap of the bottle. He didn’t particularly want to think about the encounter now, but a demon was a demon. Even if it was currently inactive, they should come back and look more deeply into its appearance after they’d seen to the hellhounds. Demons rarely showed up for nothing more than idleness, despite that being one of the Deadly Sins.

“Blond.” Once the cap was off, Ricardo poured a little of the water into it and set it aside. Then he opened the box of bullets, and began to pick them out one by one to dip them into the cap. After their bath, he set them to the side on a folded towel to dry. “Man-like, like I said before. Blond and tall and pale, like a European. He had odd eyes.”

“Odd? Their color?”

“No.” After some hesitation, Ricardo put down the bullet he’d just dipped and laid his hands against the table. He looked at the half-healed scrapes on them. “No. They were brown. But…odd. For a moment I thought I was looking at a person. But it was a demon. I felt that, even if it was good at hiding it.”

Lilian hummed low in his throat. “Anything else remarkable?”

“I’d know it again if I saw it.” Ricardo took a breath, then picked up the next bullet. “And it could stand on holy ground and it didn’t seem to bother it. And if it had my rosary—but that just means it’s very powerful.”

Lilian didn’t disagree with that either. His chair creaked, and then Ricardo heard the fluttering of pages followed by a soft thud, and the click of the Bible’s lock. When he looked over, Lilian was stiffly rising to set the Bible aside. The other man nodded to Ricardo, then paused.

“I believe that I will spend some time in the chapel with Father Sócrates,” Lilian said. He smiled a little. “I promise that I will go no farther, although I can’t say that I will return before you feel the need to take to your bed.”

“I have a lot to do. I might still be up.” Ricardo looked sternly back at the other man.

Lilian smiled again, then turned away. He left the room while Ricardo was checking on the dryness of the bullets he’d already done.

* * *

In France Lilian had had a car, a beaten black Peugeot that left half the gasoline put into it in a puddle at the gas station. But in Brazil they were reliant on the mercy of strangers, and more so now because of the large dent their medical bills had made in their ready cash. So in the morning, they said farewell to Father Sócrates and went out to wait at the bus stop.

This was Ricardo’s homeland, and despite his belief in the redemption of man, he kept a close eye on the cluster of lazy-eyed youths who had claimed the sole bench, watching for the flash of a knife in a shoe or waistband. Lilian, however, said good morning to all, youth or grandmother or grandson, and didn’t turn a hair at the ruder answers. Soon he was chatting away with one of the young men while the others eyed his priest’s collar, his bandages. His clothes that weren’t ragged or roughly patched, for all their obvious signs of wear. Ricardo felt at his chest, to be certain that his silver rosary was safely tucked under his shirt, and then heaved a sigh of relief when the bus finally appeared.

It was not too far to the next town and in better times they might have walked it, but with their injuries even a slow, jolting bus ride was preferable. Unusually, the bus was only half-full, and by the time they had crawled past the town’s boundary, more than one empty seat was available.

“They’re afraid of the chupacabra,” muttered an old woman. The grandmother, who clutched her grandson’s hand tightly and a tattered old Bible even more tightly to her breast. She nodded knowingly to Ricardo. “You wondering why nobody comes this way, young man?”

“I was,” Ricardo admitted after a moment. He looked at Lilian, sitting across the bus from him, but the other man seemed preoccupied with the scenery. “Hello. I am Ricardo, a divinity student. I came here because I heard of the rumors. The…er, dead animals.”

The old woman raised her brows and they cracked like no natural brows would. When Ricardo came nearer, he could see the little dips where her hand had shook and the pencil had slipped. She smiled gap-toothed at him. “Then you got nothing to fear. It’s only the sinful who lose their cattle. If you have God, then you are saved, and you walk under His protection.”

“What’s happened?” Ricardo limped to a pole near the woman, then stumbled heavily into it when the bus abruptly dropped a wheel into a pothole. Something grazed his knee as he righted himself, and he looked down to see the woman’s grandson staring solemnly up at him. The boy held a wooden fish in one chubby fist pressed against his leg, as firmly as his grandmother held his hand.

“It comes at night, they say. It comes and it calls them for their sins.” The old woman smiled again, so that her lips pulled apart with a smack. “Like an avenging angel.”

Someone hooted from the back of the bus, and another called her a crazy old bitch. “It’s a jaguar, that’s all.” The first speaker, one of the youths from the bus stop, kicked up his feet on the back of a chair, looking through them at Ricardo. “Some fools left their gate ajar, and the cattle got out, and then what do you think, with a cow running around at night?”

“Jaguar,” agreed a third man, sitting by the driver. He grinned at Ricardo. “The one with two legs. It’s hard times these days. You got to eat, but some who’ve still got something don’t know what to do with it.”

The old woman blinked around herself, as if confused by all the talking. Then she jerked back her shoulders and stiffly folded up her mouth. “You are all fools and sinners,” she said, and put her head back against the window.

“Thank you, auntie,” Ricardo said politely, ignoring the others.

For a moment the woman bent her head, and seemed about to reply, but another vulgarity from the youths in the back made her snort and close her eyes, as if about to nap. Ricardo looked disapprovingly at the grinning young men, then began to move back across the way as the bus slowed to take up another passenger.

“So what you doing here, preacher?” It was the man by the driver who’d spoken. He was a little older than the ones in the back, arms marked with scars and tattoos. “You come to show us the error of our ways?”

“No, we’re merely seeing the country,” Lilian said, unexpectedly but slow and composed. He adjusted his glasses, then his sling, returning the other man’s gaze till he began to fidget. “I have never been to Brazil, and Kaká has not come home for some years.”

The man raised his brows and pulled down his chin. “Home? He’s a southerner—aren’t you? And some name, even for a preacher.” He glanced to Ricardo, then turned his shoulder to Ricardo and his eyes to Lilian. “Huh. Well, you got a place to stay? My grandmother, she’s like that one there, all doom and gloom, but she makes the best _moqueca_ you’ll ever have. You should come and try it, and there’s a spare hammock.”

“We do not.” Lilian ignored Ricardo’s hasty clearing of the throat, and bowed his head. “Thank you very much.”

Ricardo compressed his lips, and looked unhappily towards the chattering youths in the back. When the bus finally came to a stop, he went over and took the seat by Lilian. “We’re going to be robbed. Those tattoos of his, they’re gang symbols,” he muttered.

“Perhaps they are, but he does seem to love his grandmother, and we are without housing,” Lilian serenely replied. He resettled the bag on his lap, then looked out the window as Ricardo sighed. “Have some more faith in the people you’ve vowed to protect, Kaká.”

“I will protect them, but I know them. At least here.” As if they didn’t have enough trouble, Ricardo thought. But by now he knew Lilian would at least have the stew, and there was no use trying to persuade otherwise. He’d simply have to keep one eye for the men, and another for the hellhounds.

* * *

They were the last stop, and as soon as they came off the bus, the youths surrounded them in a jostling, laughing mass to drag them down the one real street the small town had. Ricardo gritted his teeth and kept one hand on his bag, pressed over the form of his pistol.

But they came to a tiny house, not a blind alley, and when the leader knocked on a wall, a tiny old woman came out to scold him even as she kissed his cheeks. Then she looked critically at Lilian and Ricardo until one of the men mumbled about her eyesight and Lilian stepped near enough for her to see his collar. Once she knew he was a priest, she was more than welcoming, even going so far as to have Lilian take her stool.

Nevertheless Ricardo was still wary, and seated himself so he was nearest their bags and facing the one door. The food was good but the table conversation was ribald, even with the presence of the grandmother, Marta. Ricardo couldn’t even bring himself to look up from his plate, and wondered that Lilian could retain his calm as he gently disputed with the crude-tongued grandson, Juninho.

It grew dark and the other men began to leave in pairs. Juninho laughed, catching Ricardo’s attention, and then took Ricardo’s knife from him. “Even if it’s just a jaguar, that’s not something you want to run into alone at night.”

The other man picked up Ricardo’s plate and put Lilian’s mug on top of it, and then squeezed by Ricardo, heading for the kitchen—to wash the dishes, Ricardo realized. He slowly relaxed, then rolled his hips to the side and slid out of his chair. The table was too low for him and his legs were cramped.

While Marta tried to keep Lilian from helping with the dishes, Ricardo went to stand by the door where he could see down the whole length of the town. They had talked about the killings during dinner, and learned that all of them had been relatively far out, on the large ranches that blanketed this area. Tomorrow Juninho had promised to take them out to a place where he’d seen one of the mutilated cows.

At the other end of the road was the bus stop, and what had to be the last bus of the day was just pulling into it. The darkness kept Ricardo from seeing it very clearly, but he heard the creaking of it, the slight hiss of its engine, the groaning whine of its doors struggling to open. He folded his arms across his chest, then glanced over his shoulder at a clatter: Juninho had chipped a cup, much to his grandmother’s dismay.

Ricardo looked back out down the street and something pale came out of the bus. A man all in pale clothing, not the light shirt and dark trousers that were more typical. The outlines of him were quite crisp against the dark background, although Ricardo couldn’t make out his face. But then the bus pulled away, circling around and then going in the opposite direction, and as its clanking faded, the figure seemed to sharpen. Neat clean hands. A full suit, as if he were going to church in the city, and then blond hair—

“Kaká?” said Lilian, and the man was no longer there. The shadowy outline of the grasslands beyond the town was unbroken.

When Lilian tapped Ricardo on the shoulder, Ricardo turned so sharply he nearly punched the other man in the gut. And he had nearly meant to, forgetting where he was, with whom he was.

Lilian looked at Ricardo for a moment, then turned towards the kitchen. He put up one hand as if to tug at his sling, but instead his fingers lay flat against his shoulder. “What did you see?” he asked quietly.

* * *

“But there is no presence in town that either of us feel,” Lilian insisted, his voice no more than a whisper but no less firm for that. “Even if he has the ability to hide himself, he would not be able to do so if he was truly active.”

Ricardo pushed himself over onto his side, then stilled as his hammock began to sway, the pegs that held it to the rafters creaking quite loudly. He waited till he was sure that the grunting snuffles of Marta across the room remained unbroken, then quietly eased himself out of the hammock. He squinted to see the half-outline of Lilian, seated in the one chair Marta possessed. “That doesn’t mean he isn’t up to something. We’re here, we can do something. We must do something.”

Lilian sighed. “Something is not always required, and even when it is, often it’s not immediately. And you should rest. The bus was not precisely gentle on the body, and your injuries—”

“You are trying to sleep in a _chair_ ,” Ricardo hissed.

After a moment, Lilian inclined his head. “Yes. The doctor informed me that I need to avoid stressing the stitches in my back, and it is impossible to lie comfortably on one’s belly in a hammock.”

Ricardo started to reply, but cut himself off when he thought he heard a noise from the other two. He cocked his head, looking at the blanket that curtained them off from the rest of the room. Then he sighed. “Lilian. _Please_.”

“I don’t take our duties any more lightly than you,” Lilian said after a long while. He moved and the dim starlight coming in their window traced out the top of his head. “But I am aware—perhaps a little more than usual—of the limits of our bodies. It will do no one any good if you are not rested, and a little slower or a little…hmm?”

At first Ricardo believed the noise to only be the drafts shaking the blanket, but then he saw that the rippling in the cloth was too regular. He began to reach for it, but the blanket was pushed aside and something black pressed into the space. “Father?”

It was Juninho. He weaved his head uncertainly back and forth, then seemed to settle on Lilian, who had straightened in his seat.

“Father, I’m sorry if I woke you, but…” a glance at Ricardo “…Father, I need to talk.”

The man’s voice was hesitant but heavy, and curling through it was a ragged thread of desperation. It was a far cry from the cocky wit at dinner.

“Of course,” Lilian said. His voice had changed as well, its timbre deeper, welcoming but carrying an authority that Ricardo sometimes wished he’d see more often. “I would be happy to talk with you.”

“Thank you,” Juninho whispered in a rush, coming into the space. Then he started, looking at Ricardo. “Oh. Oh—listen, I’m sorry, but—but Father…”

Ricardo pressed his lips together, then turned and bent to retrieve his coat from under the hammock. He was unwrapping it from around his pistol when Lilian began to ask him. “I need to use the toilet anyway,” he said, his fingers just then touching the pistol’s handle. He was careful to keep the gun covered. “Then stretch my legs.”

“If it takes more than a few minutes, I think I could use some air myself,” Lilian replied. There was a hint of warning in his tone, but it was muted so as to not alarm Juninho.

Without speaking any more, Ricardo pushed past Juninho and went out into the main room. He slipped his pistol into the back of his waistband as he put on his coat; here in the northern grasslands, it could grow a little chilly at night. The plains were more open to the winds than the jungles and swamps would have been.

Ricardo opened the front door, and after a reflexive look about, went outside and around to the back wall, where a small roof fashioned out of a crate sheltered a tin pail. He didn’t in fact need to attend to his bodily needs, but out of need for something to do while he thought, Ricardo did so anyway. Then he did up his trousers and squinted around him, searching for the faucet in the wall that he had seen earlier, when there had been light.

Finally he found it and washed his hands under its trickle. He was forcing the rusty tap shut when the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. His hand went to the pistol at his back just as a hard grip pinned it in place.

It shoved him forward and Ricardo stumbled, then nearly fell to one knee as he choked out, “In nomine—”

“Don’t say that,” said a pained voice behind him. The hold on Ricardo’s wrist pulled upwards, then lifted.

Ricardo jerked his arm around to his front as he spun about to face the voice, then hissed and hopped awkwardly back when he realized his gun was still in his waistband at his back. He put his hand behind him.

“That wouldn’t do much to me either,” sighed the demon. Despite the dimness of the night, he was very distinct, looking as if he’d been cut from a bright day and then pasted before Ricardo. He had that sort of ephemeral air, although he was very real and very present. “You’d do better to save your bullets.”

“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti,” Ricardo spat, stepping further back. He trod on a stone and began to fall, and had to let go of the pistol to catch himself against the house’s wall.

The demon watched him without moving. Normally the mere mention of the Trinity would provoke an evil being into a rage, if not begin to banish it from the earthly plane, but the only sign of discomfort this one showed was a slight thinning of the lips, that pain in the eyes that was disturbingly—Ricardo avoided them, in order to dispel whatever spell they were attempting to cast.

“Juninho is telling your friend that he lied, and he knows it’s not a jaguar,” the demon said after a few more moments had passed in silence. It pulled at its collar, looking at the house till it noticed Ricardo tensing. Then it shrugged, its mouth curling in an attempt to mimic wryness, and looked at the grasslands instead. “He’s been working for one of the ranchers near here, the one who called up the hounds in the first place. He didn’t exactly know what was happening, but he saw something he shouldn’t have, and now he’s afraid. He knows it’s not right.”

It was very clever. Ricardo had begun to turn his head towards the house when he realized what he was doing, and made his neck as stiff as he could. He stared silently at the demon, slowly pushing himself up the wall so his hand slipped to his back again. If the bullets wouldn’t hurt the demon, then why would it take the trouble to keep him from using them?

The night was very quiet. Unnaturally quiet—all the little noises, all signs of life, they’d disappeared and Ricardo was reminded of the empty street in the city. Only the wind still blew a little, making the strands of the demon’s hair wisp across its eyes that looked so convincingly sorrowful, as if such a thing could feel guilt or grief. “The rancher’s long since gone to his just fate,” it eventually added.

“What would you know about justice?” Ricardo couldn’t help asking.

It blinked, then looked away as a humorless smile curled its lips. “There is a reason for the existence of Hell, and I think I would know it better than you.”

“You’re lying.” Ricardo unaccountably felt the urge to wince at the startled look the demon gave him. “About the rancher. If one of them had done this, then why would it start in the city? It would have started here.”

“It did,” the demon told him. “But at first the rancher thought he could hide the hounds. He owns most of the land here, and could slake their thirst with his own cattle. When he went to town he took them with him, and then he died when they turned on him. Then they didn’t stay to his cattle and people began to notice.”

“I don’t remember a rancher among those deaths, and I talked to the relatives at the funerals. You’re lying, and you’re trying to fool me,” Ricardo said. He was almost amused at how poor the lie was. “I won’t be as easily deceived as your past victims.”

The demon looked at Ricardo, then lowered its gaze. It brought its hands about before it and pulled at one of the gleaming cufflinks in its sleeves, twisting the gold head around and around between its forefinger and thumb. The stoop of its shoulders would have been tired, if it had been a man, and capable of true feeling. “I said the rancher died. I didn’t say he stayed in the city.”

“What do you—possession.” Then Ricardo did wince, inwardly railing at himself for succumbing even a little to the demon’s lure. He edged backward along the wall. “I still don’t believe you.”

It looked up sharply, and there was no mistaking its true nature now, for its eyes had gone pure hard black. “Don’t go tomorrow. The rancher was fodder, little more. If you go, you will make it worse, not better.”

“If I don’t go, innocent people will suffer, and that’s what you delight in. You— _fodder_ ,” Ricardo said disgustedly, disbelievingly. With all that he’d seen, he still sometimes wondered that such awful things could exist. “That’s how you think of us.”

“No—” Then the demon shook its head, its mouth working almost into a grimace. It put up one hand to its neck and pressed it there while looking to the side, then shook its head again and half-turned from Ricardo. Its hand dropped from its neck to its side, and then slipped into its trouser-pocket so Ricardo nearly yanked the pistol from his waistband. But the demon was walking away, back to Ricardo. “You don’t know as much as you think you do, Ricardo. Don’t be so comfortable in your righteousness—Lucifer has always thought of himself as the victim, not the villain.”

It knew his name—Ricardo sucked in his breath, his blood running cold. Then he cursed his slowness and jerked free his pistol, bringing it around as quick as he could.

But it was gone. He’d looked away for no more than a second, and it was gone. There was nothing…no, not quite nothing. Over the faint acrid odor of the toilet pail, he smelled grass and flowers—fresh and green, very different from the dry brown stalks of the plains surrounding the village. Grass and flowers, and in its heart a corruption that before he’d mistaken for the doings of man. He didn’t do so again.

* * *

Lilian gazed compassionately at Juninho, sitting against the wall with his head low between his hands, before shaking his head at Ricardo. “It was a wrong act, yes, but you should think on the circumstances once in a while, Kaká.”

“Stealing is a crime. Stealing the Host from a church is…” Ricardo shook his head, then absently pushed the heel of his hand into his stomach. After he’d told Lilian about his second encounter with the demon, he’d very reluctantly agreed not to go hunting for it right then only because Lilian had related Juninho’s story and it had more or less accorded with the demon’s claims. More importantly, Juninho knew the name of the rancher and where he lived, and so they needed the night to prepare for the coming fight. But the decision hadn’t sat well with Ricardo. It still didn’t. “Especially from a parish that’s already struggling to make ends meet and only hears from the bishop after demons have come to it. And even if he didn’t know what was to be done with the Host, he should have been suspicious.”

“Not everyone is as familiar with the dark arts as you are,” Lilian said mildly. He stood from the table and laid one hand on his Bible, bowing his head. His eyes closed and his lips moved silently for a few seconds, and then he lifted his head. “It seemed the better choice to him at the time.”

Ricardo shook his head and finished tugging the strap of his shoulder holster through its buckle. He checked that he had his spare clips and his bottles of holy water, then touched his rosary through his shirt.

“To him, he could risk the violence of the city, or he could take money for a less risky offer. He thought it’d be an easy way to help pay his grandmother’s doctor’s bills.” Lilian picked up his rosary and looped the beads around the wrist of his bad arm, careful to tuck the cross into his sling. Then he reached into his bag again, and much to Ricardo’s surprise, withdrew a long silver dagger, which he slid up his other sleeve. “I do not ask that you necessarily consider mitigation, but you should understand the circumstances to understand why one acts as one does.”

“Crime and sin should never be considered a choice,” Ricardo eventually muttered. But he left it at that, unwilling to pursue the argument. They needed to leave now if they were going to make it to the ranch-house by lunch, after which Juninho said the rancher habitually retired for a rest. “At least he’s willing to try to make it right.”

“Unlike the bishop with his less than generous purse?” Smiling slightly, Lilian looked up at Ricardo before turning towards Juninho. “I thought you had a high regard for him.”

It was too hot, Ricardo thought. He pulled at his heavy jacket, a remnant of his seminary uniform, but refrained from removing it. Magic was as much about symbols as it was faith and knowledge, and even the trappings would make an impression on the demon. And they needed as much power as they could muster, since surprise would only go so far and—Ricardo shook his head. Then he noticed Lilian was still watching him and shrugged. “Well, I did—do. I didn’t mean to speak so sharply, because I’ve seen him do a great many good works, but I can’t ignore what we’ve seen since coming here, and…I do not pretend to know how he manages his parishes, but it doesn’t seem right that they don’t even have a real altar-cloth.”

“Perhaps we shall have proper social criticism from you yet,” Lilian said lightly, as a parting shot. Then he went to Juninho and spoke quietly for a few moments to him. When Lilian was done, the other man looked no less nervous, but he stood up without hesitation.

They took leave of Marta, then set off through the grasslands on foot, since the only road apparently led straight to the ranch-house’s front door and would have offered no cover to their approach. One of Juninho’s friends, carrying a rifle with shaking hands, joined them; the rest were to stay back at the village and try to protect it, should things go badly with Ricardo and Lilian. For all Juninho’s willingness to atone for his sin, the burden of stopping the demon would likely not fall on him with only his simple wooden rosary and machete.

It was a long walk, and although the cloudy sky kept the heat from exhausting them, the trek was hard on Ricardo’s injured leg. He tried to ignore the pain as much as he could and thought that he did well, though once or twice he thought Lilian gave him a concerned glance. But the other man was preoccupied with keeping Juninho and his friend calm, and trying to explain without frightening them what was to be done, and so couldn’t spare much attention for anything else.

To try to conserve his strength, Ricardo allowed himself to drop back to take up the rear of the little procession, which also gave him more of a chance to watch for any oddities. Of course there were the thick grey clouds without even a hint of impending rain in the air, and it seemed very quiet for such a wild area. They also hadn’t seen any cattle, though they’d long since crossed onto the ranch’s lands, according to Juninho. But other than that, things were strangely peaceful. Nothing impinged on Ricardo’s senses, not even smell.

* * *

When they were about halfway there, Lilian ventured to mention he felt a little tired and would like a moment’s rest, and so they stopped by a small stream. Lilian seated himself on a large rock while Juninho and his friend went down to cool their feet in the water, and Ricardo settled for a log that had dried out instead of rotted.

His leg ached, and under the heavy cloth of his trousers, the bandages that wrapped his thigh, he thought he could feel a stickiness too thick for mere sweat. Probably Ricardo could make it to the ranch-house, but to be honest he wasn’t certain he could manage the return leg. At least not immediately.

A shiver went through him and he looked sharply about, but all he saw was the swaying of the grasses. Ricardo frowned and reached up with his left hand to cup his right shoulder. He looked round again, then watched Lilian for a few minutes as the other man systematically stretched his limbs. Lilian’s glasses were awry, Ricardo only now noticed, and into his head flashed the image—memory—of Lilian’s head knocking into the rusty bars of a fence, then dragging downward under the bulk of the body while a slender earpiece strained upwards, caught on an iron curlicue.

Only memory. With a grimace Ricardo turned away. He pulled at his shoulder, gazing at a tuft of grass near his feet. Then he half-stood and looked towards the stream; he sat again when he glimpsed the back of Juninho’s friend. He took his hand off his shoulder, and after another moment, moved it to his neck where he tugged on the chain to his rosary till he could pull the cross from his shirt.

He kissed the top, its edges so worn by use that they felt as rounded as an eggshell against his mouth. Then he pressed it to his forehead, running over the lines of a prayer in his mind. One of the first ones he’d been taught, in Portuguese and not Latin. He remembered feeling the words in his mouth with his mother’s hand on his shoulder.

When Ricardo looked up, he found Lilian looking curiously at him and oddly, he tried to turn away. He felt embarrassed—he was never embarrassed about his faith, and especially not with Lilian. Perhaps the nature of it was different, but the constancy of belief was one of their few points of agreement.

Ricardo opened his mouth to speak, but instead shivered again. He was cold in the middle of this warm day.

“Hey!” hailed Juninho’s friend. The other man swung his eel-lean body up the stream-bank to land cat-like light at the top. He smiled and scratched at his chest, pulling down the collar of his shirt to show the wiry hair beneath. “Hey. Why don’t you come down? It’s cooler here. It’s nice.”

“No, thanks,” Ricardo said.

“I do not think this is wise,” said Lilian. He stood slowly, his power unfurling about him as quietly as a flower would open. “Who are you?”

The planes of the man’s face went slack and smooth, wooden like those of a doll. Then they pulled a look of surprise, and now Ricardo saw the care in that, the artificial precision with which they shaped themselves. “What’s the matter?”

“You are using the wrong hand.” Lilian adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose, then stepped forward while taking his injured arm out of its sling. The sling snagged and he disentangled his wrist without looking away from the man. “If you wish to speak with me, I am here. There is no need to involve an innocent bystander in this.”

Ricardo lifted his hands, then put them down to press hard against his thighs. His pistol was a heavy weight at his back, but they killed demons, not men. It was too far to throw holy water, and in such open ground they couldn’t hope to pin down the vessel long enough to draw a protective circle.

The demon was silent, although it narrowed its eyes when Lilian took another step forward. “Who are you?” Lilian repeated. He looked thoughtful. “Are you the one who helped before?”

“Priest, this is beyond you,” the demon finally said. The wind shifted, and brought with it a scent that made Ricardo stiffen. “You understand the purpose of the hounds. They hunt until they’ve seized the most desirable soul, and you cannot stop them.”

Lilian nodded, but then raised an unwavering gaze to the demon. “Their hunt may end with a guilty soul, but they take no care to avoid injuring others. And it is also debatable what sort of guilt merits being torn apart by them. So you understand that I cannot stand by. Nor can I stand by while you hold this man hostage. If you are the one who gave us aid before, I am grateful, but now I must ask you to leave.”

Then he lifted his hands, and about Ricardo the air began to tingle and burn as if full of ozone. His mouth opened, but before he could begin the exorcism, the demon laughed. It was a strange, sad sound. It almost sobbed.

“It’s not _guilt_ that calls to them, you fools,” the demon said. It shook its head, rolled its shoulders, and then drew the life out of the grass about its feet with a sigh. For nearly two meters around, the plants crisped dry and brown. “Well, then—”

“You coward,” Ricardo snarled, leaping to his feet. His rosary swung wildly from his neck, then slapped against his ribs as he pushed forward, putting himself between the demon and Lilian. “You coward. Don’t hide yourself in that poor man. Come and face me in your true guise.”

He heard Lilian, voice suddenly harsh, bark out a warning, but Ricardo ignored it. When the demon’s eyes went to him, he started the exorcism without delay.

And found himself speechless, his muscles paralyzed as the demon held him by the throat. He hadn’t seen it move, but now he could see himself in the pure black sheen of its eyes, reflected in the same way as the waters of a still pool. He stared into his own eyes.

The black flicked away, like someone pulling a shutter. Ricardo looked into brown eyes with pupils, terrified wide eyes, and then the hand fell from his throat. Juninho’s friend crumpled to the ground only a moment before Ricardo collapsed, but he fell completely to lie in an unconscious heap while Ricardo had enough breath to catch himself on a knee and a hand. His other hand pressed hard against his throat, where he could still feel the warmth of phantom fingers. It hadn’t been a hard grip, he thought dazedly.

Something shook his shoulder, and he looked up. It was one of those rare times that Lilian actually roused to anger, so that Ricardo was quiet under the too-hard grip of the other man.

“Ricardo,” Lilian said sharply. Then his eyes closed. He took a breath, opened his eyes, and was calmer. “Kaká. You shouldn’t have—but how is he?”

Lilian bent down to look at Juninho’s friend while Ricardo half-crawled, half-stumbled backwards. After feeling the pulse in the throat and the breath from the nose, Lilian turned the man onto his back, careful to straighten out the arm that had been underneath.

“You’re already hurt, and I didn’t want it to happen again.” The words spilled from Ricardo’s mouth before he could help it. He was gasping a little, even though his throat was untouched. Not even bruised. He shook his head, then slapped at the dust on his knee when Lilian looked at him. “I’ll go look for Juninho. You don’t have to get up.”

The other man was silent. After a few steps, Ricardo looked back and Lilian was bent over the prone man, whispering quietly. It was French—not the schoolroom French Ricardo knew, but the rougher slur Lilian used on the phone to his relatives, and in times of great agitation.

Juninho was by the stream, lying face-down in the dirt with one hand trailing in the water. He was breathing heavily, but his eyes didn’t open when Ricardo turned him over, and his face was twisted in an agonized expression. Perhaps the demon had tried him first, and found him too hard to take. Grudgingly Ricardo thought a little better of the man. He threw Juninho’s slack arm over his neck, then picked the man up by the waist and dragged him up the bank.

The men were not physically injured, but from past experience Ricardo knew they wouldn’t wake for several hours. “We can’t wait,” Ricardo started, and then he looked up to see Lilian breaking a stick off a fallen branch. “Lilian.”

“We will not leave them. Perhaps we risk letting the demon at the ranch gather more power, but it’s possible this demon will return and take one again. You know they’re vulnerable to that till they’ve received the sacrament,” Lilian said. He took the knife out of his sleeve, then bent over, bracing the stick against his shoe, and shaved one end into a point. “But I do see that we cannot manage to take them back to town on our own.”

Ricardo began to understand. He started to stand, then hunched back into a squat, pulling at his hair. “But we’ll lose a whole day, and—and we haven’t seen any cattle, Lilian. I think they’re running out, and then the hounds will come to town. We can draw a…you’re drawing a circle.”

“No, sit.” Lilian stopped till Ricardo had reluctantly taken a seat, then resumed digging at the earth with his sharpened stick. “I will go back to town and bring help. You’re a little better with a machete, I think, and you can watch here.”

“Lilian,” Ricardo said impatiently. He stood, even though Lilian looked sharply at him again. “Lilian, no. I know you want to wait till we understand what’s happening, but we can’t wait. We already let these two be hurt because we waited about this demon—we should act now, before anyone else is.”

“And leave them behind?” For a long moment Lilian looked sternly at Ricardo. Then he turned away, sighing, but the set of his shoulders and jaw yielded no ground. “Kaká, I do regret being too lenient about this demon, but I do not think that the right penance for that is to sacrifice these men merely to ensure that we deal with the other demon today.”

“Lilian, I didn’t mean to say you made a—and I’m not saying we sacrifice them. You’re drawing a circle—we can leave them in it till we’re done—”

The stick stuck on something and Lilian paused to carefully lever out the pebble before he continued scratching. He shook his head. “I can draw a circle to protect them against the demon, but not against all the snakes or ants or other natural dangers here. I would be just as much to blame if they died from a poisonous bite as from possession.”

Ricardo opened his mouth, then exhaled sharply through it as he turned away from Lilian. He looked at the unconscious man beside him and experienced a startling flash of anger, almost vengeful in its heat. It took him a little aback, but he still couldn’t help showing his frustration as he pulled at the grass by his hip.

“A day is not likely to make much difference. I do not sense any presence here, so I don’t think the hounds or the demon have grown too restless. And we know that the servants have all left, so there’s no one at risk at the ranch-house,” Lilian said quietly. He stepped back to examine his work, then looked closely at Ricardo. Then he stooped again, digging out a curved line in the ground. “And I am concerned about this new demon. They have disputes as people do, one told me once. If there is more than one, it isn’t wise to think of them as acting in isolation, because they do speak with each other.”

“So I should consider the circumstances here, too?” A trace of sarcasm had crept into Ricardo’s voice. Instead of apologizing, he avoided Lilian’s eyes. “Which demon was this? The one in Barcelona?”

The other man merely worked on the circle. “No. I don’t know where…it was in a dream I had once. I was seeing to a sick girl, and I thought she had a curse on her, but no matter where I looked, I couldn’t find anything. I ransacked the libraries and fell asleep in one…and I dreamed I was in a library, but one that was like nothing on earth. And there was a demon who cared for it, and he lent me a book with the curse in it…”

“Lilian,” Ricardo said heavily, impatiently.

Then they stopped talking. Lilian finished the circle and Ricardo handed him one of the men’s machetes before the other man could ask for it, or step into the circle for it. Their eyes met briefly and Lilian seemed to be searching Ricardo’s for something.

“I will go as quickly as I can,” he said after a moment.

Ricardo bit the inside of his mouth, then looked at the ground. He struggled to keep his frustration out of his voice. “Go with God.”

Lilian paused, as if to reply. But he did not, and then he started off for the town. When he had passed out of Ricardo’s sight, Ricardo’s breath burst from him and he stabbed his heel into the ground once, twice. Dust rose up in a cloud, and he watched it slowly fall and settle before he finally twisted around to check that he hadn’t clouded the protective symbols.

* * *

The sun crawled across the sky. The men slept. It was quiet on the plains, and Ricardo soon tired of telling his rosary. He put it back around his neck, then stood to stretch out his muscles. The wind blew about him, teasing at his hair. He lifted his hand to brush it away, and when he lowered his hand, he saw a horseman on the horizon.

Ricardo called out in warning, but the distance seemed too far, for the horse didn’t falter at all. Instead it continued on, in the direction that Juninho had said the ranch-house lay.

The men at his feet. The man on the horse. The demon at the ranch. The ice on the bars of the fence, freezing Lilian’s blood to Ricardo’s hands as he tried desperately to pry them apart—he shook his head, then took a deep breath and set his shoulders.

It took a moment to find the pointed stick Lilian had used, and only a few minutes to add the necessary symbols. It was not right to use magic against fellow living things, to deny them the freedom of choice that God had given them, and Ricardo had taken a vow to only use his gift in the service of God—but in these circumstances, he thought he did still hold to the spirit of the vow. The men would be protected from anything that might endanger them until Ricardo could return.

Then Ricardo set off across the plains in the wake of the horseman. His leg soon began to pain him, but his long rest had restored his strength and he pressed doggedly on, following the cuts and upturned clods of dirt that the horse’s hooves had left. Juninho had said that they still had a good hour, but after only minutes, Ricardo reached a fence that was made of worked wood instead of the wire they’d seen before.

He continued on, and soon he could make out a roof in the distance, topping a small hill. The ground gradually sloped more and more, and then he reached his first carcass. A steer, its belly slashed open and empty, a maggot-ridden shell.

The second was close after, its eyes missing and its hide burned in patches. It stank of sulfur, and from then on, the smell never left Ricardo. It grew thicker and thicker as he walked, till he had to unwrap one of the bandages from his arm and tie it around his nose to bear a breath. He found more bodies. Cattle of all ages. A heap of pigs. One dog. Then a long lock of hair, rich and brown and just lying across the ground with a little bit of bloody scalp attached to it.

Ricardo paused there, swallowing hard, and for a moment he wished he’d waited for Lilian. He had entered a few fights before he’d met the other man, but they had been minor scrapes; all his major battles had come with Lilian at his side. The worst part of the last one, he thought, was that at the end, before he’d passed out, he’d begun to believe that Lilian had gone before him and left him alone.

But Lilian was in town, Ricardo reminded himself. He said a quick prayer for the departed soul over the hair, then moved on.

When he came nearer to the house, he began to move more diagonally, and to keep to the fences and bushes as much as he could. He was peering over a shrub when he heard rustling, and turned to see a hellhound emerge from another bush a hundred meters away.

It saw him. He turned and put his hand on the rail before him, then leaped the fence. The moment he came down, he pushed forward on his foot into as much of a run as he could manage on his injured leg. The jarring impact of his landing had whited out his sight, but he remembered where the house was and kept going till his sight cleared. Behind him, the hellhound howled, and then the earth shook as it came after him.

On open ground Ricardo would have no chance before the beast could jump at him, but the ranch-house was only a few meters away. He scrambled up its front steps and across its broad porch, then started, a cry half-snagged in his throat, when another hellhound lunged at him from the far end of the porch. Ricardo spun about, saw an open window and threw himself through it.

He landed awkwardly, then jerked down a bit farther as something gave under his hip with a loud shattering beneath him. The bottle of holy water—Ricardo slammed wildly out with his hand and caught the floor, pushing himself over before his weight stabbed him onto the shards. He rolled onto his feet, flapping his arm to make the glass fragments fall away from him, and once he was clear of the mess, smoothed a hand over his leg. Thankfully it seemed that the thick cloth of his trousers had kept him from being cut.

A vicious growl made Ricardo look up in time to see the trembles move along the walls as the hellhounds paced down the porch. Their black bulk filled the windows, and then one turned to try to force its huge head through the window, its spittle sending up tendrils of acrid smoke wherever it landed.

Ricardo reached for his second and last bottle of holy water, then looked sharply about himself as he unclipped it from his belt. The room was empty, but brown bloodstains dotted the floor and walls, and through the doorway to the hall, he could see a staircase with a violently splintered railing. He quickly poured some of the holy water in a circle about his feet, then muttered an enhancing spell so the ragged but unbroken line flared white.

The hellhounds balked, then angrily threw their bodies against the walls. But they gradually retreated as Ricardo smoothly segued into the first of the exorcism chants. They whined and stamped about on the porch before grudgingly moving into the yard. Occasionally one still lifted its head to glower at Ricardo, but it was clear they were keeping their distance.

He finished the chant, then stopped to catch his breath and to take his pistol out, then laid that at his feet. When he straightened up, a man was standing in the doorway.

The rancher, Ricardo instinctively knew. The man’s eyes were a smoldering red, like dying coals, and there was something unnaturally rigid about how the muscles in his face pulled out a smile. “Hello.”

Ricardo wiped the back of his hand over his dry lips. His throat had closed on him, and he had to begin the second chant in a whisper to ensure that his voice wouldn’t fatally break on any of the words.

“I saw you out on the plains, Ricardo. You looked angry,” said the demon. It took a step into the room. “Waiting there by yourself. And where’s Father Thuram? I’ve heard so much about him from the others, I was looking forward to finally meeting him.”

The familiar weight of the Latin slowly eased the tension from Ricardo, and he raised his voice. Yes, he’d been tricked by the horseman, but he had made himself safe anyway and now he had to rid the world of this demon. That was his duty, and he need mind nothing else.

The demon cocked its head. Its smile died. “You think you’re a tough one. Huh. He did, too. He thought he was the toughest damn man in the _sertão_ , and—” its voice went from smoothly educated to drawling “—ain’t no man was going to cut his feet out from under him.” Then smooth again. “You know, I’ve seen a lot of your kind, and I do wonder at what you lot call us up for. World domination? Hah. Getting cheated by your banker on your loan interest. It’s so pathetic.”

Second chant. Third. That lightness of being began to pervade Ricardo’s body. His mind slowly cleared, and he saw things calmly, with complete understanding. At the end it was nothing but the Word, God’s gift to man.

“You…” the demon snarled, abruptly breaking from its gloating. It jerked its head farther about than any human could have done and Ricardo heard bones in the neck snapping. Then the demon threw itself over to the window, grabbing its sash and forcing it up as wide as it could go. It shoved its head outside. “Hey! Hoy! Get over here and have your soul already!”

Ricardo heard a hellhound snort, and then had to stoop to keep from falling out of the circle as the whole house violently shuddered. His voice faltered—he was trained to save the possessed body at any cost, even though the other demon had said that the rancher was already dead.

But before he could do anything, there was a horrific crunching, tearing sound and the rancher’s body slumped down the wall, then flopped over to show only a torn stump of a neck. Vomit choked Ricardo’s throat so he couldn’t continue; he dug his nails into the floor, dragging his eyes upward, and met the hideous glare of the hellhound, its maws still dripping with blood.

“Well, so much for him,” said a voice behind Ricardo. “That’s one you didn’t save.”

Ricardo started to jerk about, but his nails jammed into the floor stopped him, because they didn’t let him turn easily. He took a deep breath, then steadied himself and forced the last few words of the third chant from his mouth. Then he pivoted, and looked, and the demon raised its brows at him.

In its own form, it was broad-shouldered and had longish blond hair that framed its narrow, slit-eyed face like a lion’s mane. Its skin was the color of red sandstone. “You _are_ one righteous little priestling, aren’t you?”

“Arioch,” Ricardo whispered.

It smiled. “You recognize me. Good. Then you know that those little chants won’t work on me. Oh, you pretty little young fool. Here you are—you can’t go till you take care of me, and you can’t do that. And there Father Thuram is, in town. Or I should say, there his bones are.”

The hellhounds outside didn’t move, but a tremor went through Ricardo. He pressed his lips shut. Demons lied, he reminded himself.

“Having their marrow sucked out by my colleague that he persuaded you to leave be. I _do_ like the taste of irony,” Arioch said. A thin black tongue slipped out of its mouth and flicked over its lips, and while it was still curling over the top one, a second tongue, just as slender and dark, twisted at Ricardo like a snake’s would. “I’ll have to dispute with him for stealing my meal, but one less priest in the world is good for all.”

“It could’ve had us before and it walked away,” Ricardo snapped without thinking. Wincing, he tore his eyes from the demon and stared at the ground. The memory of Lilian’s back moving away came into Ricardo’s mind and he watched his fingers curl. One of his hands had landed over his pistol.

Arioch laughed. Its head went back so it insolently flashed its throat at him. “Oh, you trust that? We like to _play_ , little student. And besides, you and Thuram had my marks all over you…he wouldn’t want to touch that. He might have saved you, but only so you’d grow fatter, like chickens in the coop.”

Finger by finger, Ricardo closed his hand about the gun. It wasn’t quite positioned correctly and he had to nudge it with his thumb till he could reach the trigger.

“But at any rate, you can be sure Thuram’s dead.” The laughter was gone when Arioch looked again at Ricardo, eyes cold. He nodded towards the body in the corner. “Dead as him. Dead without you. Poor man, he had a good run before he met you, and then you didn’t recognize the hellhound spit dried on the sill—”

“He’s not dead.” Ricardo closed his eyes. Then snapped them open, but somehow that didn’t banish the images dancing before him. Black ice slashing over the alleyway, turning his heel under him. Lilian’s back just in front of his face, and the man’s voice breaking above him as the breath of the hound steamed over them both. “You’re lying.”

“—you dragged him down, so they caught up—”

Warm red blood on Ricardo’s hands, warmer than his fingers in the cold. He can’t make his hands move fast enough on the gate’s latch. He’s out of bullets and he can hear the scrabble of the claws rounding the corner, and at his feet Lilian is so still.

“—you didn’t stop them from getting to him, and then you thought you could stop me from getting to him.” Another laugh. “Well, you did, but you didn’t save him, Ricardo. He was depending on you and you disobeyed, you came here to face me, you failed him _again_ and now he’s dead and I have you.”

“No. No, no-- _no_ ,” Ricardo hissed, slapping his hands over his face. He tried to claw away the visions, the smell of the blood and the dread in his heart, the illusions that he knew weren’t real but that felt so—they weren’t real. It was tricking him again, like it’d done before, and no. He wasn’t standing for it. He would not allow it, he would not let it happen again, he would _not_.

“I did it,” it gloated. “I did it all. You couldn’t stop me. You couldn’t keep the hounds from bringing back his taste for me and oh, it was _sweet_. Such a good man, and he was sweet on my tongue, and you fool, you think you can deal with me without him. You come here, and you actually think you can take me to task for dislocating his arm, for tearing the flesh from his back, for drinking his blood—”

He couldn’t stand it—Ricardo threw himself to his feet, flinging out his arms. “No!” he screamed. “No, no, no no no nononononno—”

More power than he’d ever called on before came to him, came so easily as he rejected everything that the demon was forcing on him. Everything—no. Not again, never again. He had the power to stop it and he would stop it, he _was_ stopping it and the surge of it through his body was—he didn’t know what it was. He’d never felt it this way before, never gone beyond what he was taught, but right now he was so _angry_. Angry. No.

He’d looked at Lilian’s limp body on the icy ground and he had hated the hounds for doing that. Hated the hounds and the demon, and no.

Ricardo didn’t see what happened. He only felt it burst irresistibly forward, carving the center from him, but even as he fell, he knew that he’d done enough. He could feel Arioch’s laughter shred, could feel the demon shudder under the flood. Shudder and struggle and then give way, swept back to Hell.

 _But I have you,_ came a small, triumphant voice in Ricardo’s head. It effortlessly cut through the roaring. _Wrathful boy, I have you. You were the one, you foolish little thing, and now the hounds will bring you to me._

* * *

Air. Pain in the leg. A sideways chair, and Ricardo breathed raggedly and lifted his head, and saw that he was the one who was sideways. He groaned and moved his arm, then jerked up onto it as he heard wood splintering.

He was still in the ranch-house. Arioch was gone, truly gone, but the hellhounds hadn’t gone with the demon as they should have. Instead they—there were more of them. One half-jammed in the window, its forepaws mashing the rancher’s body into pulped flesh. Another banging at the door while a third grinned through another window, and more howling in the yard.

Ricardo glanced down to see no lit circle around himself. But he’d been unconscious…he muttered the words that should have showed him the lines of the circle, even broken, but nothing came. Not even a tingle—he looked about for his pistol, then snatched it up, but felt only the heft of it in his hand. He should have sensed the blessed bullets within, but it was as dead to him as it would be to an ordinary person. Frantic now, Ricardo ripped at the beads around his neck till he’d gotten out his rosary, but even that—dead.

He looked up at the hounds again, and now they looked not merely vicious but _hungry_. For him. He’d done—what had he done. He hadn’t used his gift the way he’d been trained, he hadn’t used it with the precautions, the restraints that kept him from abusing it. He’d merely used it. He’d been so—angry.

Something crashed to the ground in the hall and Ricardo whipped up his head, then threw himself back as the hellhound at the front door came thundering inside. His hands caught on the floor and he wanted to pray, but he couldn’t remember the words.

The hound paused in the doorway, looking at him. The muscles of its shoulders bunched, and then it—jerked back. Its head went up, then down, and then it snapped irritably, as if it’d encountered a sudden obstacle.

“Ricardo,” from behind.

He turned and the other demon was standing behind him. Ricardo flinched, then forced himself still when he heard the hellhound snuffle. “Where is he?” he asked harshly. “What have you done with Lilian?”

“I haven’t done…” The demon frowned, tipping its head. Its eyes clouded as if it was thinking. “He’s just arrived back at Juninho with some other men, and is asking Juninho where you’ve gone.”

“Then you didn’t kill him? He said—Arioch said.” Then Ricardo ran out of breath. He coughed, put one hand to his throat and coughed again.

The demon’s face went cold and stony, and now Ricardo saw the pale suit had been torn and dirtied in several places. One sleeve was shredded, and there was some sort of red cord twisted around the demon’s ankle, with a ragged end trailing off onto the ground. “I haven’t touched Father Thuram,” it said. It looked at Ricardo, then at the hellhound. “They’re here for you. You called on Arioch even as you sent him away, with your rage.”

Ricardo already knew, and yet he hadn’t. It was different to hear it in crisp certain words—the hellhound in the room growled and he shivered, then twisted around to face his—his fate. He stared at the long white teeth. He had earned them but he was _frightened_ now, frightened to think that…he looked at the demon again. “You’re keeping them back. How are you…that isn’t supposed to be possible.”

“It is if you came first,” the demon told him dryly. It raised its brows at Ricardo, and then it slowly knelt beside Ricardo, as if concerned about startling him. Its hands were no longer so perfect and smooth: cuts covered them, and one nail had been torn away. “Hellhounds come from Hell. I came _to_ Hell. I watched them come into existence.”

“I don’t—I don’t understa—” Ricardo jerked back when the hellhound made a feint at him “—understand.”

For a moment the demon looked at him. Then it bowed its head, chuckling softly. Something rustled behind it, then moved, and Ricardo flinched before he saw the feathers. Two great wings unfurled from the demon’s shoulders, two beautiful wings, like a bird’s and yet not for no bird had such grace of line. But they were not perfect. Their white feathers were mottled black and brown and grey, ugly colors like someone had daubed them with filth.

The wall shuddered and Ricardo tore his eyes from the wings to watch in horror as the hellhound stuck in the window dragged more of itself into the room. The touch on his arm made him twist about and seize the demon’s wrist without thinking, and then he couldn’t make his fingers open when he did know what he was doing.

But the demon seemed not to care, not even looking down. Instead it looked straight at Ricardo with those too-human eyes. “Unfortunately I’m not God or the Morningstar. If enough of them come, it’ll be too much for me,” it told him. It paused, then smiled ruefully and moved its arm, taking Ricardo’s hand with it. Its fingers touched the side of Ricardo’s jaw. “You’re young and beautiful and powerful, and for all your fierceness, you have uncertainty. You would make a perfect vessel for Arioch, and you wouldn’t be bound by the rules we are.”

“What are you?” Ricardo asked. He shivered again. “Who—”

It cupped his jaw and held him still while it pressed its mouth to his lips. The world spun down to the two of them and the point of warmth that connected them, and then that blossomed to sweep through Ricardo. Lightness—a different lightness, not the sense of being removed from things, of having something greater move through him, but the lightness of being _present_. Of feeling so much from so little, feeling fear and comfort and shame and desire, feeling the crease in the demon’s lip and the slight waft of air from its fluttering wings. Feeling heat in his core and chills in his fingers, on his brow, and then suddenly it all sucked out of him.

Ricardo stared, emptied and frozen, as the demon stood up. Its wings were more muddied now, the blots grown and merged into patches.

“I had my hand on your neck when you were sleeping. I was going to break it. That would have done it, killing you before Arioch could reach you.” The demon smiled and looked away, shaking its head. “Oh, but I see now why He loved you more.”

Then it stepped around Ricardo and went to the hellhound, which pulled warily back for a moment. The hound glanced to the other one, who’d just pulled its hindlegs through the window, and then the two of them lunged forward.

Ricardo opened his mouth to scream, but the demon beat its wings once, and the wind from it blew the scream back down Ricardo’s throat. It sent him across the room, into a piece of furniture that fell on him, and the last thing he saw before the world went dark was a swirl of bloody feathers.

* * *

Cesc paused at the door, sniffed, then came into the room and hopped onto the nearest pile of crates. He looked over the two strangers, then craned his neck so he could peer over Figo’s shoulder at the paper the man was reading. Whereupon Figo turned the paper away and looked at Cesc, who rolled his eyes. “We found it, okay? Turns out Sergio had it in his tail along with a bunch of other junk—we found your toothbrush too, by the way. So what’s up?”

“I really should’ve just hired professional movers,” Figo muttered. He leaned back against the crates so Cesc could jump to his shoulder. “And I hope you threw away that toothbrush.”

“Hey, you have like, a zillion little things and we’ve only _temporarily_ lost three of them, so I don’t think we’re doing too bad. And there wasn’t anything wrong with your toothbrush, but fine, if you wanna waste a good…” Cesc cocked his head, then turned to look at the two men. “What? You’re werewolves.”

The one on the right, with the great eyebrows and sour expression, got all tense and started glancing nervously at Figo. The one on the left with the floppy dark brown hair blinked. “You’re a talking fox. We don’t talk when we’re…um, wolves.”

“I’m a demon. _Demon._ ” For good measure, Cesc let a little electricity crackle around his head, only to have Figo irritably bat at him. So maybe he’d shocked Figo’s ear a little—that still wasn’t a good reason for Figo to be making him fall off, and especially with how often Figo had shocked him by accident. Grumpily human-shaped now, Cesc righted himself on the crate. “So who are these morons? Even Gila was cooler about us, and he didn’t know anything at the beginning.”

Figo started to give Cesc a reprimanding look, but got distracted as something thumped outside. He straightened up and turned towards the door, and didn’t look too reassured when Raúl’s muffled voice said not to tilt it the other way or the other one would go next. “Honestly, sometimes I wonder why I didn’t just sell the shop and move to a farm, if you’re going to turn everywhere into a health hazard with the pigeon bones…oh, this is Adrian and that’s Cristian. They’re here to see me about lifting a curse.”

“Is that it?” Cesc asked, flicking the sheet Figo held.

Adrian, Mr. Eyebrows, wrinkled up his mouth. “No.”

Cesc looked at him, then kicked back on the crate and thought about what else humans brought to business meetings. He watched Cristian peer surreptitiously into a half-unpacked box of gold things, noting how the man’s eyes widened. The werewolves were dressed all right, but not like, super-fancy, and Figo’s non-bookshop services didn’t come cheap. Well, unless you were an overgrown angel-cuddling asshole like Zlatan. “Is it a coupon?”

It was kind of a shame mortal shape-shifting was an all or nothing transformation, since Cesc would’ve liked to know if Adrian’s wolf-ears would have gotten all flat like Mori’s when Mori was annoyed. Still, Adrian did do a pretty good growl with his human vocal cords. “It’s a letter, if you must know. From his great-grandfather to mine.”

“He was the last great mage in the family till me. Spent a lot of time in the diplomatic service, and that’s apparently how they met,” Figo muttered. He was reading the letter again, brow furrowed in a way that meant his ancestor had had really bad handwriting. “This says out of thanks for the years of loyal service and companionship, and due to his lasting affection, he guarantees that his descendants will offer any help necessary to…oh, so it’s a coupon.”

Adrian twitched all over, then heaved a sigh like he’d rather hit something. Then he twisted around to look at Cristian, who’d been snickering along with Cesc; Cristian hastily smoothed out his face.

“All right, this is authentic, so I suppose I have to honor his promise.” The air tingled a little around Figo and suddenly little green symbols were glowing all over the sheet. Then Figo waved the sheet a couple times and they disappeared, leaving Cesc leaning over to read nothing, like an idiot. Figo looked faintly smug as he shouldered Cesc aside and bent over to start poking in boxes. “But it might take a little longer than usual. Sorry about that, but as you can see, I’m in the middle of moving.”

“That’s fine. It’s not urgent, just…really frustrating,” Adrian said, edging forward. He looked a cross between grateful to be getting on with it and unsure about what ‘it’ was. “So…should I tell you about it now? It started with—”

“Hang on,” Figo grunted. He dug around some more, then cursed and pushed at Cesc. “Off. It’s in that box.”

Cesc opened his mouth, then reluctantly chose getting out of the way over telling off Figo. The whole morning, the man had been desperate to find one stupid relic and Cesc had found it, and did he even get a thanks? Nope. He didn’t even get to read the letter. “Wonder what he did, to get that kind of a coupon.”

Adrian glowered at Cesc, then seemed to remember Cesc was a demon and he wasn’t, and backed up. The human still looked annoyed. “It’s _not_ a coupon. And my great-grandfather was a very honorable—”

“Well, if I remember right, my great-grandfather’s diaries say they…oh, here.” Figo stood up while flipping through a scruffy journal-type of book. “Right. Investigated a lot of mysteries, saved each other’s lives a lot, fucked all over Europe. Sounds like my great-grandfather, all right. I always wished that I could’ve met him—he’s one of the few ancestors that I think I’d get along with.”

“You know, that’s really funny, since they named Adrian after him,” Cristian volunteered. He totally missed the shut-up look a panicky Adrian gave him, he was so eager to put in his share. “’cause Adi looks so much like him, sommph!”

“Can I just tell you about the curse now?” Adrian asked desperately, pushing his hand down harder over Cristian’s mouth.

As grumpy as Figo was, he totally enjoyed making other people uncomfortable. He was pretty demon-like that way. “Oh, sure,” he said, watching with plain enjoyment.

Cristian finally slapped Adrian’s hand away, then retreated a couple steps, shoulders hunched and hands jammed in his jeans-pockets. He looked offended, but Adrian wasn’t exactly bothering to look round to find that out. Instead Adrian was glancing between Figo and Cesc, obviously weighing up something in his head.

“In private?’ Adrian finally ventured. “It’s…er, it’s a little…”

“Does it have to do with sex?” Cesc asked brightly.

“ _No_.” The muscles of Adrian’s shoulders and arms rippled a little more than they should’ve for just being really annoyed. Maybe he was going to go wolfy on them.

Or maybe Figo was going to be even more of a jerk, and kick Cesc out of the office. Cesc turned around to see the door slam shut, then changed to fox-form instead of getting up off his butt. Since obviously standing wasn’t going to do any good.

Cristian coughed into his hand, then awkwardly moved his shoulders. He put his arm back and hooked his hand on his neck, looking down at Cesc. “Er. So. You’re a demon? Shaped like a fox?”

“Yeah,” Cesc muttered. He twisted around and stared out at the rest of the room.

After a hesitant moment, a bark from somewhere in the left back corner got the other fox-demons back to bustling around, moving boxes and unpacking books and assembling shelves. When Cesc had come in, everybody had been totally human, but apparently Raúl was okay with them showing ears and the occasional tail in front of Cristian. Anyway, Cristian wasn’t freaking out now, unlike his uptight friend.

“That’s nice,” Cristian said absently, staring wide-eyed about the place. Then he started, skipping out of the way as Silva popped his head out of a shadow near his foot. Silva asked Cesc if he’d seen Joaquín, Cesc shook his head, and Silva melted back into the shadow while Cristian looked on in palpable awe. “Wow. That’s really cool—er. Sorry. We’re not dumb, but we just don’t get too close to most demons. You know, since people have the hardest time figuring out we’re not those.”

“Doesn’t being mortal make it kind of obvious?” When Cristian just shrugged and sighed, Cesc snorted. He began to preen his tail. “Well, Figo’s not like that, but you should tell your friend not to be so snobby. You still don’t want to get Figo mad.”

Cristian blinked, like he didn’t know what Cesc was talking about. Then he made a little ‘o’ of comprehension with his mouth. “Adi’s not _snobby_. He’s just very proud of his family. And it’s a good family, so…anyway, it’s not like Adi’s embarrassed about the whole great-grandfather thing. Really. We’re werewolves. We’re fine with alternative relationships.”

“Yeah, the whole pack thing, right? That’s something I’m not sure I get about mortals. Well, some mortals—Figo at least gets that not sleeping around and being faithful aren’t the same thing,” Cesc said. Then he narrowed his eyes at Cristian, who’d just done something weird with his eyes. They’d gone bulgy, like Gila did when he was about to freak out. “Or what, you guys have packs but you do the monogamy thing too? Then how is that a pack?”

“No, well, it depends on the…we have real packs. It’s just—we’re not all wolf all the time, okay? It’s complicated.” Then it looked like Cristian was going to correct himself, but instead he just rumpled his hair. “Well, actually, it isn’t when I’m a wolf. It all makes sense then. But look, the point is that Adi’s annoyed you called his letter a coupon. It’s a family heirloom. Otherwise he’d be fine. Just…he’s not his great-grandfather, even if they have the same name. I don’t think he’s going to flirt with Figo or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Cesc had no idea where that had come from, and after he’d stalled a couple seconds by pawing at his tail, he still didn’t know. Though he had a _lot_ of dust in his tail, ew. “Oh, I don’t worry about that. If anything, you should be worrying about your twitchy friend—hey, I didn’t even think of that. So it must run in the family.”

“What?” Cristian said.

“What does?” Villa came up and thumped down a crate, then sat on it and stretched out his legs till the joints popped. He gave Cristian one of his self-esteem-killing side-glances, then moved onto rotating his arms. He was a lot less of a jerk since he and Silva had started sharing nests, but he was still…a jerk.

At least he was helping out for once, and not pretending that Figo was just some human he tolerated, like it wasn’t totally the other way around. “Figo had a great-grandfather who slept with werewolves,” Cesc said. “So I guess his family’s got a talent for attracting things with fur.”

Cristian blushed and shuffled his feet, while Villa just looked funny at Cesc.

“Oh, come on, he even got you once, and you liked it. I heard you howling,” Cesc snapped, jabbing at Villa’s ankle with a paw. “You put Figo in a room with anything that’s good-looking and can wag a tail, and—”

“Cesc, shut up before I step on—”

“I really don’t think Adi would—”

A couple of things happened at once: the door to Figo’s office slammed open, and a bunch of metal fell from the ceiling. Since the falling metal was louder and more unexpected, everybody including Cesc looked that way first and saw a whole heap of silver stuff crash into the floor. Cesc’s hindquarters melted to shadow, but he relaxed and resolidified when he realized they weren’t being attacked. He sniffed the air, and when he didn’t smell anything dangerous, he trotted forward a few meters to take a look.

It’d been one of those mobiles Figo had hung from the ceiling at his old shop, and that Iker had spent forever this morning being anal about hanging correctly at the new place. Which was irritating but which had a point, since they served as barometers for various supernatural phenomena…so it probably hadn’t fallen just because Figo had slammed the door. Cesc turned around and found Figo standing behind him, looking really grumpily down at the crumpled mobile.

“Damn,” Figo said. “I—” His office phone rang. He stiffened, then sighed and glanced upwards. “—am going to get that. Nobody touch this till I get back, and…oh, Adi, I’m sorry but can you come back tomorrow? I can probably have a draft by then, but right now I need to take that.”

‘Adi’? Cesc moved over and lo and behold, Adrian was stammering that that was fine while holding shut his half-unbuttoned shirt. His hair was all mussed, and when he got done talking to Figo’s back and turned to see everyone looking at him, he went red as the sauce on pasta pomodoro.

“Holy shit, Adi,” Cristian breathed, his eyes bulging again. “What—”

“See you tomorrow,” Adrian said stiffly, nodding to the rest of the room. Then he grabbed Cristian’s arm and dragged the other man out of the shop.

Silva eased up out of the floor next to Cesc, grinning in the direction of the two departed men. “Hey, Figo got another one?”

“Yup.” Cesc held out his foreleg till Silva saw it, and then they bumped paws while Villa stomped off, muttering to himself. At that Silva looked a little worried, but he got distracted when Cesc went up to sniff delicately at the fallen mobile. “Good thing, ‘cause this smells like trouble.”

Silva sighed. “I just hope they’re nice, whoever they are.”

* * *

Lilian heard the flight attendant quietly tell the passenger across the way that it would be less than an hour until they began their descent. He put his finger in his book to mark the place, then turned to pass on the news to Kaká.

The other man had slumped to the side, with his head leaning against the wall. His head was turned away but angled down and at first Lilian believed him to be sleeping. And would have been relieved if that had been true, for since Kaká had woken in the hospital, he had rested only when Lilian would reluctantly force a sleeping pill on him. If left to his own devices, he would go through all the motions of preparing for bed, but then sit silently in bed for hours.

But Kaká stirred at Lilian’s movement. He lifted his head and his eyes were closed but the tension in the flesh about them revealed that he’d had no true rest. The seat creaked as he sat back, pushing at his hair with one hand. He pressed his fingers over his left eye, then took them away and looked at Lilian. “Is something the matter?”

“Only that we’ll be in Milan within the hour,” Lilian finally said. He hesitated, then laid his book on his lap. “I should say that Figo is not someone of whom the Church proper approves, although I understand that he is a good man, in his way.”

Kaká frowned, but absently, his eyes staring through Lilian. He passed his fingers through his hair again and pulled his head back onto the seat, then let his arm slowly slip down. “I think you told me before.”

“I did, but I wasn’t certain that you had heard me.” Not with the look Kaká had turned on him, dull and distant, the stare of a man with nothing beneath him. It was the same look that Kaká gave Lilian now, although around those bleak eyes the planes of Kaká’s face still strove to shape confusion, inquiry, like an old man waking in the dark of the morning out of habit, long after the factory had let him go. “Kaká, if you aren’t comfortable with speaking to him, then we do not have to go.”

“But you already called, and made arrangements,” Kaká said after a long moment. He spoke slowly, his brows pinching with the effort of drawing forth every word. On his lap, his fingers moved restlessly around and around the hump of his blanket-covered knee.

A stray needle of hope thrust itself deep into Lilian’s chest, but while he welcomed the pang, he also tried not to lean too much on it. That the other man was still aware of his surroundings was a promising sign, but little more than that. “Arrangements can be canceled. It may not be necessary. We’ve not searched all of the Church’s resources—”

“Then why did you go to this man?” Kaká interrupted sharply. Someone coughed behind them and he grimaced, though it was not clear that he and that were connected. His eyes closed again, their dark lashes blending with disturbing ease into the dark, puffy flesh ringing them. “Because you know the Church won’t have it. Or that they won’t give it to you.”

Lilian drew breath to speak, then let it out in a long, quiet exhale. He looked down at his hands, but the book was in the way, and in an odd fit he pushed the book into the space between his leg and the armrest. He’d now lost his place, but that was a minor matter.

“Or…that they would, but you don’t trust how they would give it.” Kaká opened his eyes and glanced at Lilian, then looked away with a curl to his lip that Lilian did not like. “I might agree with more of the papal bulls than you, but I’ve not been blind to how things are done, Lilian. No, this Figo is fine, if you trust him more. I will do as you like.”

“That’s exactly the opposite of what I would like. Kaká. I am…I am sorry, so sorry, that I was not there,” Lilian said. He took a deep breath that he didn’t require, watching his one hand knead into the palm of the other. “But I promise you that we will find an answer. I will do everything that I can to—to see that you are healed—”

The other man started, then looked sharply at Lilian. His brows rose and fell, and then he slumped back with a low, pained laugh. “Oh. _Oh_ …oh, no…no, I thought…” he tried to compose himself and for a moment his breathing sounded like a sob “…Lilian, I thought you were afraid the Church would force my power back on me, not that I’d remain like this forever.”

Lilian lifted his hand and left it in the air for several moments. Then he lowered it, but to the blanket that was slipping off Kaká’s lap, and not to the man’s shoulder as he’d initially intended. “I don’t think I understand. I don’t pretend that I could, Kaká—I’ve never known a time when I didn’t have some sense, at least unconsciously—”

“Lilian, I’m not bothered by my loss of magic,” Kaká said starkly. He stared before him. His hands curled into fists over the blanket, and then he raised one to press against his temple. “It hurts, yes. It makes me feel deaf and blind and dumb, but it’s only…only the natural consequences of my actions.”

“I don’t understand,” Lilian repeated after a moment.

Kaká didn’t seem to hear him. The other man closed his eyes with a grimace, still pushing his fist into the side of his head. He twisted in his seat and his breath came uneven and pained. “What I don’t know—what does bother me, is if this is only the—the remnants of it. It was so quick—there wasn’t much time, and perhaps he didn’t take it all—perhaps I deserved more.”

They had spoken about what had happened. In the hospital, as soon as the doctors and nurses had left them. At the time Lilian had thought that Kaká was a little weak for it, but the other man had been insistent to the point that denying him seemed more harmful. But the actual telling of it had been surprisingly dry, all details and no real sense of what had passed between Kaká and the two demons. It had been unlike Kaká to not have a point of view, but Lilian had let it pass, waiting for a better time.

This was not such a time. Kaká grimaced again, then dragged his hand down the side of his face. His nails left angry red tracks on his cheek. “He took the hounds with him, Lilian. They were there for me—and they took him. So I can only—the only way—it only makes sense if he took _my_ sin on him. Took my punishment.”

“Kaká—”

“I don’t understand it,” Kaká said abruptly. He twisted restlessly in his seat, then turned to push up the cover on his window. Outside it was pitch-dark, but Kaká peered at the glass as if he could see things there. He put up his hand against the glass, then curled his fingertips. They left visible tracks on the glass. “What was the demon doing? What would he gain from that? He _was_ gone, wasn’t he?”

The sudden agitation of the other man should have warned Lilian, but his attention had been taken by something Kaká had said. “As far as I know. I only found you and the dead, and those feathers on the floor…”

“Then they did take him. Instead of me. And I don’t…” Kaká’s fingertips snapped outwards and pressed down till his nails turned pure white. The tendons in the back of his hand lifted nearly clear of his flesh with tension. “Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know,” Lilian admitted. He lifted his hand again, and this time he went on to put it on Kaká’s shoulder.

But that only seemed to provoke the other man, who turned so sharply that his blanket dragged off his lap. His shoulder slid back from Lilian’s hand. “You’ve always told me to consider what else motivates a demon besides evil,” he said. His voice gasped wildly but was rising in volume. “Perhaps you were right. They are innately selfish, they do not think of others and that includes their master—but in the end it still comes down to corrupting souls, Lilian. That’s what I’ve always believed. That’s why I justify—can justify—”

“Kaká, I’ve also tried to stress that it isn’t wise to assume before one knows—”

“But I erred. _I_ sinned, _I_ let myself be corrupted, and yet he went in my place. And I know he was a demon, I don’t think I was mistaken in that, but Lilian, he didn’t—deserve it.” Kaká lowered his head, then jerked it to the side, as if trying to shake off the agony that strangled his voice. He grabbed at Lilian’s arm, but his fingers were uncoordinated and his hand slid; he tried again, only for it to drag down again. “And I know that demons are created solely to do evil, and I know that he must have done evil in the past—he did evil while we were _there_. He attacked innocent people, and Hell should be his rightful fate, but—but I keep thinking, Lilian.” When Kaká raised his head, his eyes were strangely washed out, like charcoal-stained water. “I think he went for the wrong reason.”

“Sirs?” A flight attendant bent nervously over them. “Sir, is everything all right here?”

Lilian began to address her, but heard Kaká shift and glanced back to find the other man slumped against the window again. He pressed his lips together, then tried to arrange his expression into a friendly but noncommittal one as he bent down to retrieve Kaká’s blanket. “Thank you, but it’s all right. Only a nightmare,” he said, folding the blanket. “I’m sorry if we disturbed anyone.”

“Oh,” the flight attendant said. For a moment she seemed hesitant about believing them, but then her eyes went to Lilian’s collar. She took a step back, plainly still harboring uncertainties, but willing to move on. “Well, you were a bit loud, but you can’t help a nightmare. Please let me know if I can get you anything, Father. Juice, or…”

“We are fine,” Lilian said gravely, with a nod. “But thank you. The offer is appreciated.”

That seemed sufficient for her, and she slowly began to move down the aisle. Lilian let out his breath, then looked at the folded blanket in his lap. Then at Kaká, who had put up his arm so he could cover his face with his hand. He rubbed at his eyes as if his head pained him.

“I don’t know what to think now,” Kaká abruptly muttered. His shoulders moved jerkily back and forth. “Even at their best, in your eyes, demons are only biding their time before they do something that merits—but he didn’t. I did. And I go forward unpunished—”

“Dos Santos.” Lilian waited for the other man to look at him. “Kaká. You said yourself that you aren’t entirely clear on what happened. It may be that there were—were forces at work that we know nothing of. At any rate, I have asked you before to think more kindly of demons and other supposedly unnatural beings, and I would like to ask you now to think more kindly of yourself. You did nothing that I personally find unforgiveable, and God’s mercy is infinitely more expansive than my own.”

For a long time Kaká gazed at Lilian. Gazed at him with the eyes of a man who knew, with the pulse of his blood and the pain of his soul, that Lilian was trying to stretch a lie over a fatal wound. Such eyes that Lilian had seen in the _banlieues_ , in the faces of men who had lived wrongly all their lives, who had perhaps enjoyed it or been driven to it, but in the end who waited quietly, hopelessly for it to kill them.

But Kaká was still young, and for all the hurts he had suffered—the physical injuries being the most minor, clearly—he had a determined nature. Such a personality was not easy to throw off.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. He looked down at his hands, one of which was picking nervously at the scabs on the other. The corners of his mouth twitched painfully. “I think I’m afraid, Lilian. I’ve never—thought that my faith wouldn’t be enough, but what if—what if this Figo tells us that yes, it was a test of me and that I failed? I don’t know—”

“And I cannot tell you either. But it’s no use looking at the unknown and wondering about how unknown it is.” Lilian paused, questioning whether he might be too forceful now. But however fragile Kaká was now, it was plain that he couldn’t be left to trap himself in his terrible musings much longer. “But if there is a test of faith, then I would say that it’s here. I know I’m often faulted for my unorthodoxy, but I just cannot believe that the pursuit of knowledge is incompatible with faith. If anything, it requires more faith than the alternative, for only when you find the end of knowledge do you know when true faith begins.”

Kaká was silent for a while, and did not raise his head. The raspy hiss of the recirculated air intruded on their quiet, then receded as Lilian’s ears became re-accustomed to it. Other passengers groaned or whispered, then startled in a brief chatter as the PA crackled. The pilot came on to tell them briefly about their anticipated landing, delivering the usual information about gates and transfers and baggage. Through Kaká’s window a soft glow began to come from the approaching city lights.

It seemed to catch his attention. He glanced at the window, then stooped slightly to look through it. Then he leaned back and put his hand on the shutter. After a pause, he firmly pulled down the shutter.

“I would like to know,” he told Lilian quietly. “What it is that happened, and why. As much as we can know.”

“Then we shall find out,” Lilian replied.

* * *

Zlatan threw out his arms, and all the gas burners flamed up with a huge whoosh. “Oh, _fuck_ no. I see where you’re going with this. You want me to ask Paolo. No, fucking no. No.”

The flames went back to their normal little blue flickers and Alberto slowly lowered the wooden clipboard he’d stupidly tried to use to protect himself. He looked anxiously around, then took a deep breath when he saw that nobody was on fire or screaming in pain. Then another one when he heard a lot of bitching about the gas line. “Careful, everyone. Um, so the private-party reservation’s got two more people, and I’m going to call the gas company now.”

Thankfully Figo seemed to get that having Zlatan burn down the kitchen was going to be really horrible for whatever they were arguing about, and had dragged them both into the hall. He still just looked annoyed about it, though. “I don’t want you to ask him. I’m asking you if you know anything about it—”

“Not really, but you already knew that and so next you’re going to ask if maybe Paolo does ‘cause this is more his thing and I’m not fucking asking him. Sandro’s been cranky all week about something and Paolo’s stressed out about it, and the last thing he needs is rescuing yet another idiot angel,” Zlatan hissed. He was still waving his hands, but it looked like the spells were keeping him from doing anything. But he was also kind of showing fangs and a snaky tongue, and this was a public hallway. “I told you Gigi was the last goddamn one.”

“And I agreed, because that was pro bono for me too, but this is a job. More importantly, this isn’t about an angel. It’s about a demon and why wouldn’t you know about it?” Figo looked at Alberto as Alberto tried to tiptoe by them, then raised his hand like he was going to stop Alberto.

Zlatan had his back to Alberto. Normally Alberto would’ve assumed the demon still knew he was there, but when Zlatan flapped his hands this time, he nearly snagged Alberto’s sleeve with a claw, so maybe not. “There are a lot of demons! Why am I supposed to know about every single fucking one?”

Now Figo wasn’t looking at Alberto anymore, and he had his arms crossed over his chest. Not that Alberto would ever, ever tell him this, but Sandro often used the same expression for the same reason. “Fine, you don’t know about it.”

They just weren’t going to go any farther, Alberto despairingly decided. He glanced down both ways, then shuffled to the left another meter, where the hallway was longer and people were more likely to come. Then he took out his phone and did make a call, but not to any gas company since he knew that was…well, the line was working the way Sandro wanted it to be working. The argument two days ago had assured that.

“I do so—wait a moment,” Zlatan said. He moved back a bit, then bent his head so he looked more like he was going to leap on people than usual. “You live with a whole legion of fox-demons, and—”

“Zizou’s in the desert and I don’t know where, and Helen is busy.”

“—if Raúl doesn’t know, then Morientes should be able to tell you. Dumb fur-for-brains that he is, he’s still old enough,” Zlatan finished. His head cocked. “You did ask them. And they didn’t want to tell you either, but you fuck them so you didn’t want to push it and you’re a real jerk sometimes, Figo.”

Figo pursed his lips, but didn’t argue with that. “While I appreciate the compliment, this isn’t really a good time for flattery.”

Rolling head and shoulders in disgust, Zlatan pivoted half-around to lean against the wall. His eyes looked normal and he didn’t have his claws or fangs out, but the air around him was still crackling. Literally—Alberto could hear it and he looked around again, but didn’t see anything burning. Of course it could just be in another room, but he didn’t smell fire or hear screaming. Then again, not all the rooms were being used.

He flinched, then pinched his phone between his ear and shoulder and got out his keys to start checking. Behind him Figo sighed. “Well, Raúl getting concerned is nothing new. Mori was a bit of a surprise, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen you get this nervous when it didn’t have to do with Paolo or Sandro.”

“Because it _does_ have to deal with them. I just said—”

“Look, I heard you. You’re not going to ask them. But I didn’t come here for that, though I’ll admit to being curious now. But I’m more curious why you don’t even want to talk about it,” Figo said.

Alberto finished his call to their ricotta purveyor, then switched off his phone and looked up just in time to see a waiter coming back. He hurried up to the other man and heard what he wanted, then shooed him off. After he’d passed the message along to the kitchen, he came back to open the first of the storage rooms.

“…of them are just fucking weird.” Zlatan paused. “And this is me saying that, but you’d get the same reaction from Henke. Just…there are some demons that you don’t even want to bother with. I mean, why don’t you ask Gianluigi if you’re so damn interested?”

At that Alberto whirled around and nearly said something before he caught himself. He clutched at his clipboard, wondering if this was really a good idea—okay, it wasn’t, but there was no way he was going off to hide either. He tried not to look too frightened as he edged up to hear better.

Figo had turned to look straight at him, but the other man’s smile probably was for Zlatan. “Gigi?”

“Yeah. He was an enforcer too and he’ll be more current than Paolo anyway, since he wasn’t in Hell for centuries and centuries. He should have met a couple.” Zlatan shrugged his left shoulder and pulled at his nose. “I bet he’d love to talk about them, too. Go on and on about how evil they were and how righteous he was, and how he took his mighty sword and—”

“Um, he didn’t use a sword,” Alberto blurted out. He tried not to jump when Zlatan looked at him, and instead concentrated hard on a spot on Figo’s neck. Probably he still looked like he was…well, he was cringing, but at least they would know he wasn’t going to go away. Unless maybe Zlatan tried to eat him. But Gianluigi would be really, really mad, and Paolo and Sandro wouldn’t be happy either, Alberto reminded himself. “What are you talking about?”

“What do you mean, he didn’t use a sword? I’ve seen him using swords—”

Then Zlatan jerked forward. His eyes widened like he hadn’t meant to do it, but both of Figo’s hands were in front and when Alberto checked, there was no one in the hall behind them. Zlatan turned to glower at Figo anyway, but Figo just nodded to Alberto. “An old friend asked me to look into something that happened in Brazil, and so far it looks like it involves a demon I don’t know anything about. Now, I really don’t want to cause you any trouble.”

“But if it turns out you have to talk to Gigi, you’re going to anyway?” That came out a little nasty, Alberto thought. He’d just meant to say something like, he’d seen Figo working enough times now to know what to expect. He fiddled with his clipboard. “Was anyone…did anyone get hurt? Are you trying to stop it?”

“The demon? No, it’s…well, I haven’t spoken myself to any witnesses, but it sounds like the demon is…gone. But it did kill a lot of people, and there’s apparently a…” Figo frowned “…a priest in training or something who did the exorcism, and he didn’t get out in good shape. I’m actually supposed to meet him in two days, so that’s why I’m asking around. Gila, I know I don’t always seem that—”

“No, I mean, I know. If people are hurt, you do whatever you have to so it’ll stop. I don’t know how Gianluigi’s going to take it, but…he’s kind of in a good mood right now, if that helps,” Alberto said. Something suddenly flicked over the back of his hand and he flinched, but then saw it was just the string holding his pen to the clipboard, which he’d teased loose. He sighed at himself and started to tie it back on. “But he doesn’t actually like to talk much about what he um, used to do.”

Zlatan raised his brows, then snorted and turned away. “What, he talking down to you again?”

From the way Figo looked at him, it seemed like Zlatan was going to get that invisible elbow in the back again, so Alberto cleared his throat to distract them. But then they were looking at him and he felt like he had to say something, so he said the first thing that came into his head. “No, he just says he didn’t enjoy it, so—I told him once he doesn’t have to talk about things he doesn’t like to do, just that I’d like to know what he doesn’t like so I won’t…well, do it. Oh, but he did say he used swords when it wasn’t that important, or hard, or…something like that.” It looked like Zlatan was getting offended for some reason, so Alberto skipped ahead. “Anyway, he has a spear. We keep it in the closet with the paper towels.”

“Well, that’s…interesting,” Figo finally said. He pursed his lips a few times, head tilted in thought. Then he gave himself a shake and pushed at his hair. “We probably don’t need the spear. And seriously, Gila, I—you’re right, I do think that saving lives outweighs some things, but I wouldn’t say we’re there yet. So would you be annoyed if we saw Gigi?”

“No. I just…I don’t know if he’ll talk to you about it, is all. But I guess it doesn’t hurt to ask.” Alberto looked back and forth as Figo and Zlatan shot each other glances. “I mean, I can ask, if you think he’d be too nasty to you. I just don’t know if it’ll go anywhere.”

Figo shrugged, still staring hard at Zlatan. “Oh, that’s fine. Thanks very much, Gila. I really appreciate you taking the time.”

“I’m just asking if he would talk to you about a demon, right? That’s not that much…he’s coming to pick me up today, so I could even ask him then,” Alberto said.

“Well, I don’t bat my fucking eyelashes and act all cute. I fucking _mind_ when they’re upset,” Zlatan abruptly snapped. Then he stomped off down the hall, banged open the door to the second-floor stairs, and stomped through that.

It was on the tip of Alberto’s tongue to call after him that nobody was up there—Sandro was shopping and Paolo was out front, temporarily taking over for Alberto and oh, God, he really should’ve gone back by now. Alberto slapped his forehead, then sighed deeply.

“Don’t take that personally. He’s just…you know, I don’t know. That must be some argument he and Sandro have going now,” Figo muttered. Then he cocked a brow at Alberto. “You don’t happen to know anything about that, do you?”

“I don’t think it’s really an argument, honestly. It’s just they’re kind of irritated with each other—a lot of little things. But I don’t really see that much.” Because he was supposed to be out front. God, he was the worst maître d’ ever. He really hoped Paolo hadn’t gotten slammed with too many people. “Um, look, I have to go back to work, but I’ll ask Gigi when I see him? Will you still be around?”

“I have some other things to do, but I’ll come back. You get off at eleven, right? And Alberto…if it starts to upset Gianluigi, you don’t need to push for me. It’d be helpful for me to know, but he’s not my only option,” Figo replied. He patted Alberto on the shoulder, then eased himself by Alberto, heading for the back door. “Oh, Cesc says hi.”

Alberto briefly forgot how moronic he was and smiled. “Oh! Tell him the same for me.”

Then he turned around and saw Paolo coming down the opposite way with a harried look on his face, and his heart sank. He took a deep breath, then stuck his clipboard under his arm and went to face the music.

* * *

Gianluigi wasn’t too thrilled when he heard what Alberto wanted but he agreed right away to do it, so it was hard to tell whether he was irritated because he didn’t really want to do it or because he still didn’t like Figo. Either way, it was probably a good thing that Figo wanted to meet them at a café by the Duomo. As much as Alberto would’ve loved to see the fox-demons, they wouldn’t have helped at all.

“Sorry we’re late,” Alberto said as they took a seat. “I had a hard time finding a place to park.”

Figo waved that off, then pushed the menu towards them. He took a sip from his own coffee before putting down his cup and folding up the paper he’d been reading. “Well, at this time of day—oh, I was wondering about that. I didn’t think you had a driver’s license yet.”

“I do not, and I do not intend to procure one,” Gianluigi said stiffly. He loosened the scarf around his neck, but kept his gloves on and his coat buttoned, even though it was quite warm in the café.

He did look cold, with his cheeks and ears still pinked even though Alberto had already gotten back the feeling in his own ears. This week he was doing something in the city’s historical archives, which Alberto had imagined to be quite drafty. But Gianluigi had said every time that Alberto asked that he liked it down there, with the lack of noise and the straightforward words of man, so…Gianluigi hadn’t much seemed to feel the cold last winter, either. For the first month after he’d—lost his wings—Alberto had forever been finding him out on the balcony, staring at the sky. Once it’d been snowing so much that Gianluigi had had a thick coat of it on him, and at first Alberto had thought that somebody had pranked him and left a weird snow-man on the balcony.

Gianluigi and Figo were doing that tight-lipped staring thing, Alberto suddenly realized. He absently picked up the menu, trying to think of a good reason to interrupt, and then noticed that Gianluigi was staring at him now. “Er, well, Gigi’s been working only a few blocks away, so he just walks over when he’s done and I drive. So…oh, I’ll…I’ll have a cappuccino. The special, with the marshmallows. Gigi, you want anything?”

The waitress turned a bright smile on Gianluigi, who didn’t look at her at all when he shook his head. She stood there for another moment, her brows rising, and then she turned on one heel with a little helpless shrug that made Alberto want to rub his temples. Sometimes it was annoying to watch people flirt with Gianluigi, but Alberto had worked with enough waitstaff to know that with them, it usually was just to try for a bigger tip and he could sympathize with that.

“They sent a sketch, but I’m not confident about its accuracy, since nobody said they saw anything but the human form,” Figo finally said. He poked about in his newspaper till he’d extracted a sheet of paper from it. When he turned that over, it proved to be a printout of a sketch that Alberto actually thought was quite good. “Even that was limited to one person. The rest of the time, the demon spoke through possessed people.”

“Generally the human form is changeable.” Gianluigi leaned over the sheet, flicked his eyes down it and then leaned back. He started to look away, out the window, but then his brow furrowed and he looked at the sketch again.

Figo pursed his lips a couple times, gazing everywhere but Gianluigi. “Yes, I know. But there’s also the possibility it has a favored appearance. Zlatan always looks the same.”

“That demon is widely considered to be an anomaly,” Gianluigi said, but he wasn’t thinking about what he was saying. As sharp as his voice was, he’d gone very still so his hip had pulled away from Alberto, and he had that look in his eye that meant he was remembering something from—before.

The waitress brought Alberto his coffee and some complimentary biscotti, and then when he thanked her, made a laughing comment about how much he’d been shivering when he came in. That got Gianluigi’s attention, making him sit up and bridle even though she was already wandering off. Alberto coughed under his breath, then touched Gianluigi’s arm when that didn’t get the angel’s attention.

Gianluigi looked sharply at Alberto, so maybe that hadn’t been a great idea. But before Alberto could reassure the angel that he was fine, Figo sighed and slouched down the bench so his heels squealed a bit on the wet tile. “Fine, but the fox-demons always have a certain—look, I’m not here to argue the finer points of demonology with you. Does it even look familiar?”

For a moment Gianluigi just kept looking at Alberto, like he hadn’t even heard Figo. He lifted his hand towards Alberto’s face, but then frowned at it. Then he put it down on the counter and began to peel off its glove. “Was there any sort of transformation? Does your contact have the least bit of sensitivity—”

“He was a very promising young exorcist before it happened, so I’d say he’s not blind to the unnatural,” Figo said dryly. He reached over and picked up the sketch, then looked at it himself. “Should I have mentioned that he works for the Church?”

“It makes no difference to me whom he considers his earthly superior. Such categorizations have—had no meaning except to mortals,” Gianluigi replied, his tone almost off-handed. Well, for him: it looked like he was still annoying Figo. “Did he have wings?”

Figo blinked. “The exorcist? He’s not—”

Gianluigi crumpled up his glove in his hand and turned to look fully at Figo with the same expression that always scared the fox-demon kits. It even made Figo go a bit stiff. “No, the demon. Of course the exorcist wouldn’t have wings. He’s not a—”

It wasn’t really Alberto’s place to comment on how Figo did his business, but he did sort of know Gianluigi’s quirks now, and he didn’t think looking that eager about what Gianluigi was going to say was a good idea. Neither did Gianluigi, since he just shut his mouth so his teeth clicked, then stared at Figo. After a couple seconds had passed, Figo threw up his hands and gave the ceiling a sour look. He muttered something to himself about damned foxes and their big eyes, then looked tiredly at Gianluigi. “Actually, there were wings. The exorcist said they were feathered, like a bird’s wings. White with lots of dark mottles on them. And there were a few other oddities, like being able to stand holy ground, but I didn’t think too much of that since Zlatan’s forever—”

“I would not use that demon as a standard of comparison. He’s spent too much time with Sandro and Paolo and it’s contaminated him,” Gianluigi said sharply. He moved his head around, like he had a pain in his neck, then abruptly twisted sideways to squeeze his knees out from under the table into the aisle. Then he hunched over to tug at his scarf and put his glove back on. “Your exorcist friend is lucky to be alive, and should seriously reconsider the next time he decides to meddle with unholy things.”

And then Gianluigi got up and walked outside. Alberto started to go after him, but forgot he was holding a nearly-full cup and got cappuccino spilling all over his hand. He hissed and put the cup down as fast as he could, which made _more_ spill…thankfully, it wasn’t boiling hot now. Probably he hadn’t burned himself.

Figo got him some napkins, and then the waitress brought him a bit of ice in a hand-towel. “I’d just sit and cool that,” she said. “Your friend’s just standing outside, and he could stand a bit of cold air, I’d think.”

“He’s just up—” Alberto glanced over his shoulder, out the window, and breathed a sigh of relief when he spotted the fringe of Gianluigi’s scarf “—just a little upset. He’s not really…”

“She’s gone, Gila. Besides, I don’t think you should be apologizing, or that she’s the one who necessarily deserves one,” Figo observed. After he’d mopped up Alberto’s spilled coffee, Figo wadded up the stained napkins and shoved them to the end of the counter. “Well, that went well.”

Alberto grimaced. “Sorry.”

“Gila.” When Alberto looked up, Figo seemed regretful about something. He wouldn’t look Alberto in the eye till after he’d sighed and shook his head. Then he finished what he was saying, his voice a bit quieter. “Gila, sometimes I’m so tempted to…anyway, it’s not your fault. I am getting damn frustrated, though.”

“Sorry,” Alberto muttered. Then he winced again, since Figo had just told him to stop that. He was so awful at listening to people, honestly. “So it’s weird that demons can go in churches and things? Because it makes sense, but Zlatan does go into churches all the time. I don’t think he likes it, but…”

“He doesn’t, and neither do the older fox-demons, who can do the same thing. Apparently it gives them a creepy-crawly feeling, like you just woke up to find a bunch of lice in your fur.” Figo looked slightly embarrassed at his wording. “To quote Cesc. It seems to depend on the type of demon. The ones who spend the most time with humans gain some tolerance, but as a result they’re often not as powerful as demons who are more closely tied to Hell. And considering the number of deaths, I was thinking it was more that type.”

Alberto h’mmed to let the other man know he’d heard him, then took the ice off his hand. His skin looked pink, but he didn’t see any blisters forming, which was good. He put the ice back on, then drank some of his remaining cappuccino without thinking. Then he looked outside.

“Oh, it’s all right, I’ll go, and tell him to come back inside,” Figo said, before Alberto could get up.

Then he went out as Alberto was trying to tell him it was fine. All Alberto managed to do was get the waitress to come back over, and she tried to get him to sit down. He ended up sort of snapping at her that he wanted his check, and then felt awful about it, so he counted out an extra bill for her tip. That slowed him down even more, so by the time he got to the door, Gianluigi was coming back inside.

Gianluigi put his hands on Alberto’s shoulders, keeping them from running into each other. He looked down at Alberto, his lips half-parted like he was going to say something, but finally he just stepped aside. At first Alberto didn’t get that, but then he realized they were blocking the door and got out of the way of a group trying to get in. Then he took out his car keys and started off towards the car.

The wind had kicked up and was making it hard to keep his eyes open when it was already dark, so it took a while to find the car. By the time they’d gotten into it, Alberto was perfectly happy to sit there with his hands pressed to the vents and wait for the engine to heat up. “It’s going to be freezing tonight,” he mumbled absentmindedly.

“I’m sorry.” Gianluigi somehow hunched his huge frame into a third of his seat. He started to push his hand over his hair, then noticed he had his gloves on and yanked those off almost angrily. But the eyes he turned on Alberto were nervous and wide, their whites terribly pale against the deep shadows of the car. “I was—angry, and I didn’t think. I don’t know why I went out, but I’m sorry.”

Alberto looked at Gianluigi, then glanced down at the gearshift between them. Then he looked up, cursing at himself because even if he didn’t know what to say, he knew by now not to get distracted. It always made Gianluigi think Alberto was madder than—when Alberto wasn’t even really mad, just confused. As usual. “I do that all the time. Er, do things without thinking when I’m mad, so it’s fine and…and are you all right? Are you still upset?”

“I’m sorry,” Gianluigi said again, a little more desperately. He was getting worked up.

And Figo was gone and no fox-demons were around so Alberto couldn’t ask for advice, and…and Alberto still really sucked at this, but he was going to try, damn it. He took his hands off the vents and turned towards Gianluigi, then reached for the angel.

He kind of had some idea about feeling Gianluigi’s hands to see if he was cold from standing around outside, and then going from there, but Gianluigi’s head went down between Alberto’s hands and Alberto just had no idea what that was. He ended up watching like an idiot while Gianluigi squeezed down across the seats, grunting as he curled around the gearshift, and got his head in Alberto’s lap. Then for a moment Gianluigi was still. His breath hit Alberto’s knee.

Then Gianluigi started to look up, and Alberto had only glimpsed the nervousness in the angel’s face when his hands went automatically down. He patted Gianluigi on the shoulder, then put that hand on Gianluigi’s arm and tentatively started to stroke the angel’s hair. Not that Alberto knew what he was doing, but it was better than sitting around letting Gianluigi get more and more panicky. “It’s okay,” he tried. “I’m not angry, okay? I’m just…okay, you are freaking me out a little. Are you okay? I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have asked you to talk to Figo. I didn’t know that—”

“You wouldn’t have any idea,” Gianluigi muttered. His voice had gone low and gravelly and Alberto thought maybe the angel was getting irritated, but then Gianluigi turned his face into Alberto’s lap, pushing his nose and chin into the padding of Alberto’s coat. “Don’t apologize. You weren’t even born yet.”

Alberto…petted Gianluigi’s head some more. He stared down the length of the angel’s contorted body and wondered if upgrading to a bigger car might be a better idea than his annual summer vacation this year. It hadn’t seemed like Gianluigi liked Miami too much anyway.

“But I wasn’t that old then. I don’t…” Gianluigi’s brow furrowed so Alberto could feel the ridges with his fingers “…know why now, except that perhaps it comes with having fallen. But it bothers me to think about it, when during it I—I had no time to think about it.”

“What?” Alberto asked.

Gianluigi went stiff and Alberto thought he’d screwed up. But then Gianluigi rolled over—he grimaced and humped his back over something—and stared up at Alberto. He lifted his hand and just brushed his fingertips along the side of Alberto’s jaw, then drew back his hand as if he thought he’d offended. “The beginning. Just after the Morningstar had been banished, and there were no rules yet. There was only war, and…it was so hard to know one from another. We weren’t so different…they hadn’t made themselves different yet.”

Then Gianluigi fell silent. He kept staring at Alberto, but he wasn’t really staring _at_ Alberto—he flinched when Alberto moved his hand near Gianluigi’s face. But then Gianluigi took a deep breath and turned his head, pressing his face into Alberto’s palm. He moved his hand and wrapped it over Alberto’s fingers, holding them in place while his mouth brushed across the hollow of Alberto’s palm, the mounds at the base of each finger. His lips were very warm and Alberto couldn’t help a shiver, though the car heater was going pretty good now. “Gigi, do you want to go home now?”

Gianluigi nodded. He pressed his thumb against Alberto’s wrist, then closed his eyes. “Yes.”

“Okay.” Alberto hesitated, then mentally braced himself. “Okay, but…I can’t drive with your head in my lap, so can you sit up?”

The angel opened his eyes. He blinked once, then pulled himself up a lot more gracefully than Alberto could’ve done. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, trying to comb at his hair with his fingers. “I forgot.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Alberto said warmly. He put the car into drive, then twisted the wheel so they’d peel away from the sidewalk. “Actually, sometimes I wish they’d design a car you could drive that way. Especially this week—the reservation book is going to give me nightmares, and that’s if everything goes perfectly. If something goes wrong, I really don’t know what I’ll do.”

* * *

The next day seemed like it was going to be a bit better. For some reason Gianluigi decided he was going to make breakfast—Alberto really, honestly wished he had a way of knowing what TV Gianluigi was watching when Alberto was at work—and it turned out really tasty, if kind of a mess. But Alberto had to say seeing Gianluigi with powdered sugar in his hair made up for that.

Unfortunately he couldn’t stay and help Gianluigi get it out, since he’d been going in early every day to help people work around the Sandro-Zlatan sniping. But when he got to the restaurant, Zlatan was happily whacking a giant cleaver through the lambs—and doing it right—and Paolo said Sandro was taking a late morning upstairs, so maybe they’d made up. Paolo was humming to himself, anyway, and all the purveyors had made their deliveries on time for once, and the place just had a really nice, cheerful mood to it.

The first two turns for lunch went off without any problems and Alberto had just finished seating the biggest party for the third turn when he thought he heard something. Of course, he was in a crowded dining room, so he was in fact hearing a lot of things…but this noise had been different. He didn’t even think it’d come from anywhere in the room.

Alberto paused where he was and slowly turned in place, taking in everything, but it all looked fine. One table getting bussed in the corner, another having their duck served, and a bright jingle as the bell above the door rang. Shaking his head, Alberto hurried over to take care of the newcomers.

But once that was done, he had to admit that that strange sound was still bothering him. So he asked Alice to take over for a couple minutes with the excuse that he needed the bathroom, then went into the kitchen hallway. He stood there for a couple seconds, then decided without having the slightest idea why that that wasn’t it. Then he turned around and went back the way he came.

He’d just passed the door to one of the pantries when he got a weird feeling that made him stop. For a moment Alberto stood there telling himself that he didn’t get those feelings because he wasn’t somebody with that sort of gift, and the little bit of weirdness he did have was mostly because he hung out with angels and demons. It wasn’t anything to do with him. So he was probably just making this up.

He wasn’t very convincing, even to himself. And anyway, he’d been around long enough to know that he couldn’t predict anything, and Alberto sighed and turned. Screamed for the second it took for his hand to get up and slap itself over his mouth, then fell back against the wall.

“You _do_ do that a lot,” Zlatan said. Then he looked past Alberto at the door. “So is it just me, or did you hear something?”

“Um, I did but I was all the way out there, and…and you heard something too?” Alberto asked hopefully.

Zlatan ignored him and stepped forward to grab the handle to the door. He twisted it and pulled it open, looked inside, and then closed the door. Then he started to turn like he was walking about, but stopped halfway. He blinked. “Gila, there’s a naked man in there.”

“What?” Alberto began to reach for the door, but then jerked back his hand. “A man? Not a—”

“Well, I don’t know. He doesn’t smell like a demon or an angel,” Zlatan muttered, scratching at his head. He chewed on his lip, then abruptly stalked down the hall and then up the stairs.

So…was Alberto supposed to stay here? He’d been away from the front for a while, and—Alberto hissed and threw himself in front of the door, waving his hands. “No!”

The cook stared at him.

“I mean, I’m sorry but can you wait a couple minutes? I need it,” Alberto said.

“Why do you need it? I need almonds,” the cook said.

He’d totally jinxed himself by thinking it was going to be a good day before, hadn’t he? Alberto plastered himself against the door and tried to think. “We’re out. I just noticed. Sorry. I’m going to call the nut man and tell him he’s—you know.”

“A fucking incompetent piece of shit? Christ, no almonds.” Placated, sort of, the cook stomped back to the kitchen.

Before Alberto had time to even think about being relieved, Paolo came out of the kitchen with a quizzical look on his face. “No almonds? But I thought I saw a box this morning.”

“I know, we have at least three in there but there’s also a naked man,” Alberto babbled. He pulled at his hair. “Oh, and I think Zlatan went to get Sandro. He saw the man. I didn’t—I haven’t looked yet, but…”

Paolo cocked his head, then gestured for Alberto to move out of the way. He opened the door, then stood there looking, very still and quiet. His face was hard to read but it suddenly felt a little chilly around him. Then he closed the door and without a word went down the hall and up the stairs.

“Gila?” Alice peered around the corner. “What on earth are you doing? I thought you said you needed the restroom?”

“I did. I’m sorry, but Paolo just—he was here and he went up.” It wasn’t a lie. It was a bunch of incoherent sentence fragments, but it wasn’t a lie. And it wasn’t working because she was coming towards him. Alberto frantically waved his hands. “No! Go back out! I’ll be there in a minute!”

After a narrow look at him, Alice reluctantly turned around and walked off. She was annoyed and she had every right to be, and God, Alberto hoped somebody came back downstairs soon. He had no idea what he was supposed to do. He—he finished his jump away, then stared at the slowly-moving door.

It stopped about halfway open. It was a nice door, Alberto was just thinking, and then a man’s head edged out. He was blond and very pale, and when he saw Alberto, he looked surprised, but in an oddly blank way. It was a little like Gianluigi in the beginning with things like tissues and colds, where he knew what something was but he…didn’t really know, because he’d never needed it before.

“Um.” Alberto raised his hand and the man looked at him again. “Hi? Who…who are you?”

The man stared at him for a long time. He didn’t flinch even when there was a bunch of thumping down the stairs, and then Sandro called Alberto’s name.

Somebody grabbed Alberto’s arm and pulled him back, and then Paolo cut in front of him. Paolo was looking hard at the stranger. “Andriy,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

The man turned his head slowly to look at Paolo. A faint furrow appeared between his brows. “You. What did…who did you say I was?” The furrow deepened. “Do I…I do know you, but…who are you?”

That was when Alberto gave up on it being a normal day.

* * *

“The carrots are pretty good, too. We finish them with butter, so they’re really smooth and rich,” Alberto said, looking up. When he saw Gianluigi poke his head through the doorway, he started to stand but got one knee caught under the table. “Ow. Crap.”

All the noise he made still got Gianluigi’s attention and the angel turned towards them. Something groaned and Alberto glanced around the room looking for the source before he came back to the door, which Gianluigi had grabbed so hard that Alberto thought he could see the wood flexing under the angel’s grip. Alberto looked at Gianluigi and…and he hadn’t ever seen Gianluigi that frightened. That must’ve been what Cesc was talking about when Alberto had been dead and Gianluigi had seen him, and oh, that couldn’t be good.

“Everyone is reacting to me that way,” Andriy said. He sounded pretty calm, and when Alberto looked at him, the other man wasn’t even looking at Gianluigi. He was actually eating the carrots, like Alberto suggested. “These aren’t bad.”

“Thanks. Um, excuse me.” Alberto scooted out from the table and tried to cross the room without looking like he was running away from Andriy. Which he wasn’t, even though Andriy was right and that had been three angels and a demon acting like Andriy was going to drag them all to Hell, and that sort of nagged at Alberto. But so far Andriy _seemed_ all right, so Alberto was trying to be fair.

As soon as Alberto got near enough, Gianluigi grabbed him and dragged him nearly out into the hall. He was still catching his breath when Gianluigi started patting his head and chest and face; Alberto recognized that reaction and snatched at Gianluigi’s hands, muttering that he was fine and wasn’t hurt and it was all right. When he finally caught one hand, he yanked it down and kept pulling on it till Gianluigi actually looked at him.

“He didn’t,” Gianluigi said. He let out a huge sigh of relief. His shoulders sagged so much that Alberto began to put up his hands, thinking the angel was falling. But no, Gianluigi was cupping Alberto’s face and kissing him, first on the lips and then on the top of the head. Then Gianluigi pressed his mouth into Alberto’s hair and breathed raggedly in and out. “He didn’t.”

“Who?” Alberto finally asked. He tried to reach around Gianluigi to hug the angel, but Gianluigi’s bulky coat was in the way. After a frustrated moment, Alberto took the hint and fumbled around with the coat fastenings till he could get his hands inside and put them on Gianluigi’s waist. “What’s wrong? What—”

Gianluigi abruptly straightened and stepped back, dragging Alberto with him. He slapped his hand against the jamb, then pulled them partway into the room as he looked murderously around. “And where is your so-called boss? What was he _thinking_ —or was it that demon?”

“Okay, first of all, you can say my fucking name once in a while, and second of all, it wasn’t me,” Zlatan said, coming up behind them. He had a dishrag in his hand and was wiping something red off it. He saw Alberto cringing and rolled his eyes. “Pomegranate juice. Sandro lost his temper and made a bottle explode. Anyway, nice to see you, chickenbrains. For all you know, you’re doing something to Gila again that made this happen, because he heard it too.”

“Heard what?” As Gianluigi looked sharply back and forth between Alberto and Zlatan, he tightened his grip on Alberto’s shoulder and moved them to the far side of the doorway. Then he went stiff as Zlatan brushed past them to look inside the room. “How did he get here? Did that idiot mage of yours summon him? Is that why he was asking me about him yesterday?”

Zlatan stepped back into the hall, looking oddly worried. But then he heard Gianluigi and his lips curled back to show that his teeth were getting pointy. “Man, Figo would fucking blast you if he ever heard you talking about…what? Figo was asking about what?”

“ _Him_ ,” Gianluigi hissed. He yanked his hand off the doorway to jab a finger at Andriy. “He had a picture, and wanted to know if I _knew_ it.”

“Wait, that’s who Figo was asking about? What the…” grumbling one-handed rumple at the face “…no, can’t be that. Figo said the bastard got dragged back by hellhounds.”

Gianluigi’s breath whistled and Alberto looked up to see the angel’s nostrils flaring hugely. The air started to smell like ozone and it seemed like a good idea to let go of Gianluigi and get back, even though Alberto knew the angel couldn’t hurt him. He still didn’t want to get nailed by any falling scorched plaster, which tended to happen around an angry angel, and…he kind of wished Paolo would come back. He was okay with getting Gianluigi to calm down, but Zlatan’s eyes were looking a little yellow, too.

“Hellhounds,” Gianluigi said flatly. “There are hellhounds.”

Alberto couldn’t help a shiver every time they said that word. While he didn’t remember much of his death, he did remember the part before it and it was…still a really bad memory. He winced, pushed it away and was looking for a way to sneak downstairs when somebody coughed lightly. When he looked over, he found that Andriy had wandered up with plate in hand and was standing politely just inside the door.

He glanced quickly to Gianluigi and Zlatan, but they were at the angry gesturing stage and the swing of their arms had carried them a little further into the hall. It looked like they hadn’t noticed Andriy at all, so Alberto edged over. “Yes?”

“I’m done,” Andriy said. He waited expectantly, and when Alberto didn’t say anything, began to look a touch concerned. “So what is done next?”

“Oh. Well, did you want more? Um, does your stomach still hurt?” Alberto added. Nobody had told him just what Andriy was yet, but so far he hadn’t done anything weird _and_ he didn’t seem to think that Zlatan’s fangs or the static crackling in Sandro’s hair was strange. And he behaved in a way that really reminded Alberto of Gianluigi just after Gianluigi fell, so Alberto was just going on that experience. “I guess you’re full then. Here, I’ll take—”

“ _Alberto, get away from him._ ” When Alberto looked up, Gianluigi had gone grey in the face and was standing very stiffly while sort of vibrating on his toes, like any moment he was going to jump.

Alberto jittered backward because Gianluigi’s voice had been so sharp, then pulled himself together and went over to reassure the angel. He took Andriy’s plate in passing, then jerked nearly into the other man when Gianluigi actually started to lunge at them. “Gigi!”

“For fuck’s sake, don’t—” Zlatan yanked Gianluigi back by one arm, then slid halfway in front of Gianluigi. He paused, looking disgusted at something.

“You look familiar as well,” Andriy said from behind Alberto. Then he came further into the hall, peering at Gianluigi. He frowned and rubbed at the side of his face, like he had a headache. “Why?”

Gianluigi stared at him. He didn’t blink even Zlatan made an embarrassed sort of cough—he did look down when Alberto came up to him, but only long enough to grab Alberto by the arm and shove Alberto behind him. Then he went back to staring at Andriy.

“He’s lost his memory,” Zlatan mumbled. He shrugged at Gianluigi’s look. “Paolo thinks he’s not faking it. And—look, you should be able to feel it. He’s almost…mortal.”

“He can’t be,” Gianluigi snapped.

Andriy looked on distantly, a slight frown on his face. Then he put one hand in the pocket of the trousers Paolo had loaned him and gazed about the place, interested but not really, like somebody walking through a part of a modern-art museum he didn’t get. He looked at his other hand, then abruptly smashed it into the jamb. A slight grimace was the only sign that that had hurt him, even though he’d made a dent in the wood—and his hand was bleeding now. A lot.

“I have blood, not ichor,” he said. “That argues for mortal.”

For a couple moments, Alberto thought none of them had any idea what to do. Zlatan whiffed the air, then scratched his neck with a rare look of discomfort on his face. “Well, that is blood. Still not normal.”

“This is,” Gianluigi said. He stopped, staring at Andriy again. His mouth moved but nothing came out, and then he suddenly turned around and walked down the hall. He wasn’t moving very fast but he was moving like he would squash anything that got in his way.

“Guess he’s not worried about you anymore,” Zlatan muttered.

It took a moment for Alberto to realize the demon was talking to him. “Oh! Oh…um, best leave Gigi be. He gets like that sometimes, when he can’t…he still has problems with some emotions, I think. He just needs a moment to think, and…wow, you’re really bleeding. Um, not that that’s a good thing, and we should go back inside and get a bandage or something for that.”

Andriy looked up from his hand. He blinked, then shrugged and went back into the room. After some mumbling and narrow-eyed looks, Zlatan said he was going to get Paolo and went off, and Alberto guessed that meant he was supposed to take care of Andriy’s hand.

The other man hadn’t gone more than a couple meters and had to be pointed towards the kitchen, where Alberto had him run his hand under the water to wash out the cuts. The last time Alberto had been up here, he thought he’d seen the first-aid kit under the sink, so he opened up the cabinet only to find a lot of…unlabeled bottles with colors he didn’t normally see in dishwashing detergent, so he didn’t touch them. While he kept looking, he asked Andriy if any of the bones felt broken, only to look up to catch Andriy _flexing_ it to check. Even Zlatan didn’t do that.

“No,” Andriy said when he saw Alberto staring at him. He took his hand out of the water, then shook it a little. “I think it’s healing.”

Alberto got up on his knees, then grabbed the end of the counter and pulled himself up. He looked at Andriy’s hand and the flesh was closing up as if somebody was zipping it together from the inside. It even pushed out a couple splinters.

“They don’t heal like that,” Alberto couldn’t help saying. Then he winced and looked around, but nobody had come back yet. “Gigi heals faster than me, but not…that fast. I’ve seen Zlatan do it like that, but he has to mutter spells and things.”

“You _are_ human.” Andriy looked at Alberto with a little more interest than he’d been showing so far. So much so that Alberto started to feel uncomfortable, but then Andriy grimaced and looked away. He put his hand against his temple. “So Gianluigi and Sandro and Paolo are angels. Zlatan is a demon. None of them seem very pleased to see me.”

It just sounded like the other man was summing up things, but Alberto still winced for him. “Well, I think they’re…a little confused. Are you—are you okay? You must be, too.”

“I am, but…” Andriy shrugged “…most things seem familiar. In a general way—I don’t think I’ve ever been here before.”

“But you know—or you think you know some of us. That makes things a little better. Maybe?” Alberto laughed nervously and checked Andriy’s hand again. It looked almost all healed, but not like in science-fiction movies where everything went back to normal. The cuts had scabbed over and the blood was starting to dry on Andriy’s skin, so Alberto got Andriy a clean cloth to wipe that off. “I don’t know, I think I’d be terrified.”

Andriy looked at the cloth, flipped it over, and then got what it was for just as Alberto was about to explain. “I think I’m used to feeling that.” He stopped rubbing at his hand, his eyes half-shutting like his headache was back. Then he shook his head, hard, and used a corner of the cloth to clean under one nail. “I think I know Paolo and Gianluigi. Sandro…I’m not certain. Perhaps less well. Zlatan, no.”

“Oh,” Alberto said.

“And you’re Alberto, or Gila.” After Andriy was done with the rag, he looked at it for a long time. He even started to bring it to his nose, like he was going to sniff it, but some noise at the door made them both look up.

Gianluigi hesitated, then strode across the room till he was slightly in front of Alberto. His shoulders were hunched like when he was trying not to get angry at the fox-demons, and when he spoke, he sounded so curt that at first Alberto didn’t realize Gianluigi was talking to him. “Paolo has agreed to watch him, so our presence is no longer required.”

“But I’m still working,” Alberto frowned. Then Gianluigi turned on him and he started with a little yelp. He tried to cover that up by scratching at his neck, but saw the blank expression on Gianluigi’s face and gave up. “No, really, I’m only halfway through my shift, Gigi. I can’t really leave—is something wrong? Am I supposed to leave?”

“I would rather you didn’t since we’re unfortunately so busy today.” Paolo came slowly up behind them, looking more at Gianluigi than anyone else. The two of them shared a long, odd stare before Paolo finally turned to Alberto with an apologetic look. “Oh, and I’ll add a half-hour of overtime to your wages for today’s little…event. I’m sorry that you ended up in the middle of this again.”

Alberto shook his head. “No, that’s fine. You don’t need to give me the extra money, either…actually, I was expecting you to dock me for going off—”

“And so easily you succumb to the mortal belief that money eases all ills,” Gianluigi muttered. He shot Paolo another look, then half-turned like he was going to leave. But he hesitated. He shook his head, then went up to Alberto with his hand raised. It hovered over Alberto’s front for a moment before finally brushing nervously at Alberto’s cheek. “I—not you. I—I will be back when your shift ends.”

“All right.” It sounded like Paolo was talking to Andriy behind Alberto, so Alberto moved up a bit to give them some privacy. “Like usual?”

Gianluigi nodded but bit his lip. His eyes and chin flicked to the left, but he didn’t quite sneak a glance over Alberto’s shoulder.

“I think I’ll be okay. It’s not that weird this time, at least,” Alberto added, trying to sound soothing.

It didn’t work: Gianluigi’s eyes went to him, then snapped over his shoulder as Gianluigi’s hand came down hard on Alberto’s arm. The angel paused, then stooped and kissed Alberto on the cheek almost angrily. Then he straightened and said, still looking past Alberto, “I _shall_ see about that.”

He started to walk away and Alberto went after him, not wanting Gianluigi to run off while still upset. But then he remembered why Gianluigi was mad and looked back, only to find Paolo directing Andriy to go to another room. So apparently Paolo didn’t need him now, and Gianluigi…was gone. He could move so fast and so silently when he was irritated.

Well, that only left one option, so Alberto went back downstairs and apologized to Alice for being snappy and for leaving her to deal with the lunch crowd by herself. Then he smiled at the couple who’d just come up, and began to look up their reservation.

* * *

Things were pretty tense by the end of the day. There had been a few customers who’d been real jerks, and Sandro never came back down to oversee things so the staff bitched more than it worked. Alberto and Alice did the best they could, and managed to close up without any major conflicts, but it was really draining.

Paolo had come down a few times, but only briefly and when he had, he’d obviously been distracted so Alberto had tried to get what he needed as quickly as possible. The last time, Paolo uncharacteristically had banged a pot on the counter, then let slip that Zlatan had stormed off without saying where he was going, which had made Alberto wince in sympathy. Sandro and Zlatan arguing wasn’t fun, but when Zlatan was mad at Paolo the whole place seemed to feel more grey. And Alberto always felt more helpless—not that he could do much in the first place, but at least with Sandro, they could let him butcher some meat. Paolo didn’t really change his attitude towards everyone else, and he still got things done, but he would stop and stare into space a lot. It made Alberto want to hug him, even though that was a really weird feeling to have about Paolo since he was Alberto’s boss. And an ex-angel, so he wasn’t exactly delicate.

And well, hugging Paolo would probably get Alberto eaten by Zlatan. Sighing, Alberto locked up the reservation book and then swung his coat onto his arms. He shrugged it on as he went into the kitchen, checking one last time that everything was put away properly. But something was off, and he looked again and saw there was somebody in the kitchen with him.

Andriy looked so unsurprised about it that for once Alberto didn’t flail around or yelp. He just stood there, and then ducked his head awkwardly when he realized he was staring. “Er, hi. Did you…do you need anything?”

“No. But they’re arguing and it’s about me, so I thought I should get out of the way,” Andriy said. For some reason he didn’t seem that upset about it. He just told Alberto like he was telling how the weather was outside.

“I’m sorry,” Alberto replied. The questioning look Andriy gave him made him think like he’d screwed up, even though that wasn’t really possible since screwing up kind of required he know something about it first. And he didn’t know a thing about amnesia—well, he knew what it was, and he’d watched a lot of amnesiac soap opera characters, but he wasn’t so dumb as to think that that would tell him what to do. “Are you okay?”

For a moment Andriy stared blankly at him. Then the other man pushed off the cooler against which he’d been leaning. He put one arm over his shoulder and scratched at his back while looking at the ceiling. “They were arguing, not throwing spells at each other. Why, do they usually—”

“Oh, no, no no no. I mean, Sandro gets jumpy if Paolo gets a papercut.” Alberto looked up as well, though he didn’t hear anything. Which was stupid, and he started buttoning his coat up, since that at least was practical. “It’s just…I’m sorry, I don’t have any idea what you’re going through, but if it was me, I’d be upset if people were arguing about me and I had to leave.”

Andriy looked at Alberto, but kept scratching his shoulder till he suddenly grimaced and yanked down his arm. He swiveled his head from side to side and jammed his hand into his trouser-pocket. “No, I’m not upset. I left because they seemed to be more upset with me there.” After a pause, he added thoughtfully, “I have the sense that I’m used to not being liked. Anyway, I’m not certain if this is how I should feel, but I’m not very upset about any of this.”

“Well, if you don’t remember anything, I guess you can feel however you want,” Alberto said. He started wincing before he’d even finished. “Not that you can’t feel how you want anyway, and…it always sounds better in my head.”

The other man arched his brows, then smiled at Alberto. It was a nice smile, warm but not really meaning anything—pretty much how Andriy was overall. “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

“Um, you’re welcome.” It wasn’t the oddest conversation Alberto had ever had. Actually, it was really normal, with all the weird bits coming from the context around it, but for some reason it made him a little uncomfortable.

That must have shown, because Andriy stopped smiling. He looked at Alberto and…he almost looked like a totally different person for a moment, with those incredibly sad eyes. But then he blinked, and squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head. He rubbed at the side of his brow. “Alberto, I don’t remember who or what I am, but I remember how things are. I know those two upstairs used to be angels, and your Gianluigi was once one as well. And I remember how people generally react to such things, so I won’t be running out to proclaim it to the world.”

“Oh, good,” Alberto said. He absently took his gloves from his coat-pockets, then twitched them between his hands. “Um, that wasn’t actually what I was thinking about, but that’s good to know.”

“What…what were you thinking?” Andriy asked that in a weird way, stilted and slow like he wasn’t sure of the language. His voice did get oddly raspy at one point, though then it smoothed back to his usual near-perfect Italian. He frowned at the floor. “I think I used to be able to know that without asking.”

Alberto pulled on one glove, then took it off. Then he put it back on. “So…you weren’t human before? Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

Andriy had abruptly jerked his head down and clasped it in his hands, like he was having a seizure. When Alberto started to apologize, he looked up just enough to see Alberto reaching for him and he slashed out with one hand. His fingers were held in what seemed like an odd way, but they moved too fast for Alberto to really get a good look at them.

If anything was supposed to happen, nothing did except that Alberto backed off and waited. After a couple deep breaths, Andriy took his hands off his head and looked up. He still had one eye slightly screwed shut like his head hurt, but he shook his head when Alberto tried again to apologize. “No. But I don’t want to talk about that, apparently.”

“Okay,” Alberto said after a moment.

They looked awkwardly at each other—well, awkwardly from Alberto’s end, anyway. It seemed like Andriy had gone back to being vaguely interested in things.

“I just forgot what I was actually think—oh, no. No, I…it’s kind of stupid, and I’m probably wrong.” Alberto ducked his head and put on his other glove. “It’s just I hope you really are okay, because I don’t know much about amnesia but it seems to happen a lot after really horrible things. So I don’t want to bring up bad memories or anything, but I just…hope you’ll be all right.”

“Thank you,” Andriy said. He sounded a little surprised. When Alberto looked up at him, he was frowning at the back door. “I think that that’s for you.”

After a moment, Alberto went over to the door, grabbing a broom along the way. Sandro had showed him a while ago how different things would happen, like flashing lights and fireballs, if there was anything dangerous at the door, but Alberto figured you couldn’t be too careful. So he used the broomstick to turn the door handle, then pulled it half-open.

Something outside roughly pushed it the rest of the way, making Alberto stumble and accidentally lash out with the broom as he tried to keep his balance. He came up spraying around ‘sorrys,’ but then forgot all about that when he saw Gianluigi in the doorway. “Oh, thank God.”

“What did he do?” Gianluigi demanded, staring over Alberto’s head. Right about then Alberto noticed Gianluigi’s fists and tense expression.

He dropped the broom and pushed Gianluigi back out the door before the angel could lunge at Andriy. Then he realized the broom was still on the floor—but he could just say sorry later or something, he decided. Keeping Gianluigi from killing Andriy was a lot more important than putting the broom away. “Nothing! We were talking! Gigi, I’m fine and I really just want to go home, all right?”

Maybe Alberto should’ve gone back for the broom. It would’ve given him some time to catch his breath so he wouldn’t have sounded so snappish. He bit the inside of his mouth, watching Gianluigi’s shoulders slump. 

Gianluigi’s hands came up, then went down, and then came back up to hesitate about shoulder-level for Alberto. It at least made it easy for Alberto to grab and squeeze them so Gianluigi had to concentrate on him instead of on all the things the angel thought he’d just done wrong. “I’m really tired, Gigi. I had a bad day at work, and I’d like to go home now,” he said quietly.

After a long moment, Gianluigi nodded silently. He let Alberto pull him to the car, then folded himself into the passenger seat without even a grunt at the cramped leg-space. They definitely were getting a new car instead of going to Miami this year.

They drove home in a really uncomfortable silence, but Alberto _was_ tired and it was all he could do to deal with the traffic. He didn’t feel great about it, but he figured it was better to wait to try to get Gianluigi to talk when he could just focus on that by itself. God knew he was bad enough at it even then, so…he was pretty relieved when they finally got to the apartment. Of course, then he looked up after he’d taken the key out of the ignition and found Gianluigi had vanished.

The light frost on the ground kept Alberto from freaking out, since it clearly showed footprints going from Gianluigi’s side of the car up the stairs. Alberto took a deep breath, reminded himself Gianluigi was probably more upset than him, and locked the car. He made sure he’d turned off the lights, then headed up to the apartment himself.

It was really bright compared to the hallway, so for a moment Alberto just stood there and blinked. His sight started coming back about the same time he noticed somebody had half his coat off, and was working on the other half—he made a weak grab for it, but Gianluigi already had it on the coat-hanger. So Alberto just shut the door behind himself, tried to stomp some of the ice and salt from his shoes, and then pulled off his gloves and shoes. He squished his toes a few times, then took off his soaked socks as well. Apparently he needed new shoes.

“I started the shower,” Gianluigi said.

“Oh. Oh, thanks.” Alberto paused for a moment, wondering if he should try to talk to Gianluigi first. But then a yawn sneaked up on him, and it wasn’t that he was any less worried but he was…really tired. He should take the shower and wake up a bit first.

* * *

Actually, he ended up in bed. He smelled like soap and his clothes were different, so apparently he’d made it through the shower. But after that…Alberto didn’t remember. He just knew he’d opened his eyes and now he was in bed and the lights were off, and Gianluigi was snuggled up with his head under Alberto’s chin. Which Alberto promptly cracked into Gianluigi’s skull when he tried to look down at the angel.

Gianluigi twisted sharply, then pulled back as Alberto was trying to blink the stars from his eyes—so _that_ was why all those boxing movies said to aim for the chin. Then he hissed and gingerly touched Alberto’s jaw with a finger. “Are you hurt?”

“I—my fault—it’s just a bruise. Gigi, it’s just a bruise,” Alberto said, raising his voice when he felt Gianluigi trying to get off the bed. He grabbed at whatever he could and held the angel down till Gianluigi would look him in the eye. “Gigi. I’m _okay_.”

For a moment it actually looked like Gianluigi was going to argue with him. But then the angel bowed his head. He put his hand back against Alberto’s jaw and Alberto reluctantly got ready to insist some more.

“I know,” Gianluigi whispered. He shifted slightly, getting his weight on one arm, then stroked his fingers under Alberto’s chin. It was still a little sore there and Alberto couldn’t help wincing; Gianluigi pulled back his fingers, looking worried. Then sighed, and pushed at some hair on Alberto’s brow. “I’m sorry. I know I’ve been—rude again. But…”

Something was wrong with Gianluigi’s face. The way he held it so the light came from the balcony in behind him, and outlined him with silver…Alberto touched that silver border. Then he sat up in a hurry and grabbed Gianluigi’s head with both hands. He felt at the angel’s cheeks. “Gigi, is that—you have stubble.”

Gianluigi blinked. “Oh.”

“Did you have that…no, you didn’t have that this morning because—wait.” Alberto felt some more at Gianluigi’s face. “Where is it? You just had…oh, God, am I _that_ tired?”

“ _No_ ,” Gianluigi said forcefully. He leaned up and wrapped his hands over Alberto’s wrists, then shook his head. “No, you weren’t, it’s only that…that this is hard to control sometimes. I’m sorry, if you don’t like it…or did you?”

“What?” Hadn’t Alberto had all the weirdness he was going to get? “Did you do that on purpose?”

Gianluigi shook his head again, then looked away. The movement pulled them back onto the bed so Alberto had to do some twisting to keep looking at Gianluigi, who was sort of squeezing Alberto’s wrists now. It wasn’t hard, more like the angel was trying to remind himself Alberto was still there. “No. I don’t think so. That is, I could do it, but I didn’t mean to—”

Okay, Alberto hadn’t gotten all the weirdness yet. And at the end of the day, he didn’t care, because it came with Gianluigi and that made it all fine. Just…it just really hard to work through sometimes, he thought. “Gianluigi, what are you trying to do?”

“I’m not…” His grip slipping off Alberto’s hands, Gianluigi turned away to stare at the pillow. The moonlight shaded over one cheek, now smooth and oddly fragile-looking. “I’m sorry. About the rudeness. But—I keep seeing how easy it is to hurt a mortal. You’re so…and I saw you die once and I worry. I know I worry more than you’d like, but…I didn’t think about it so much before.”

Alberto almost asked what that meant, but caught himself just in time. He didn’t really know how to ask what he wanted to ask, and anyway, Gianluigi sounded like he was on a roll now. He tended to ramble when he tried to seriously explain something, but only because he had his own problems with finding the right words, and never because he was stalling.

“Because I’m trying to be—” Gianluigi grimaced a few times, poking at the mattress. He squeezed his eyes shut, then open again. “I love you. I know you’re mortal. I knew that when I fell. I don’t want you to think this is something awful for me, because it’s better—because I love you as you are, and don’t wish to change you. And perhaps that demon, or Sandro or Paolo, would disagree with me, but I’ve seen too many times the disaster in trying to—to make love what you want it to be. I almost did that myself and you died. I won’t do that again.”

Generally Alberto was not the one people asked to figure out a puzzle, and he would be the first to say so. But occasionally even he could come up with two pieces that went together, and he had been thinking all day how Gianluigi had changed, little by little, and that wasn’t only the way the angel acted. “Gigi, whatever you’re doing, you don’t have to. I—I don’t want to die, but I don’t really think I’m cut out to live forever either, and you’re fine like you are. I don’t mind—”

“I know you don’t. I don’t know why you don’t, but I love you even more for it. And I want to. I cannot—Alberto, I did know what it was like to have you dead, and I know that I cannot live like that forever. Less than a minute was long enough,” Gianluigi said firmly. But then he dropped his gaze again. He took a deep breath. “It’s not the same for me as it would be for you. It’s a physical change, and I’m sorry if I frightened you because I don’t—I’m not sure exactly what I have to give up and what I don’t—”

“If it was only a physical change, then you wouldn’t be more frightened about losing me just because you’re turning mortal, too,” Alberto blurted out. “You’re changing more than that.”

Gianluigi looked up so quickly that at first Alberto thought he’d guessed wrong. But though Gianluigi’s shoulders and neck had tensed, he wasn’t saying that Alberto was wrong. And his eyes were pained but not in the way that they would be if Alberto had been totally off the mark. They hurt a lot more than that to see.

Then Gianluigi looked down and Alberto had to swallow against how terrible he felt, because it was pretty obvious Gianluigi hadn’t expected him to react like that. He pushed at his hair, then put his hands on the angel’s shoulders. “I—I’m not trying to tell you what to do. I just—I think you should know, I don’t mind that you don’t have to die, if you don’t want to, and I’m going to. I mean, I still can’t believe you gave up Heaven, and I don’t want you to do something just because—I just want you to be happy, Gigi. You might be even if I’m not around.”

“No, I won’t,” Gianluigi said, looking up. He paused, then rolled back a little so he could lift his arm. He laid his fingertips against the side of Alberto’s jaw again, then leaned forward and kissed the spot, taking his fingers away at the very last moment so Alberto didn’t feel the change in warmth between them and his mouth. Then he settled back, looking much more certain about himself. “You’re right. It’s not only physical changes, but…it’s still not how you think it is for me. I already decided I would rather have you over continuing as an angel. This is…it’s fully living with that decision, is all.”

“I don’t know.” Alberto pushed at Gianluigi’s hair so he could see the angel’s eyes, then sighed. “I mean, I _don’t_ know how you think about it. I just want you to be sure—”

“I love you,” Gianluigi said emphatically. He put his hand on Alberto’s shoulder and gave it a half-push, then peered into Alberto’s face. The nervousness was starting to come back into his own.

Before it could fully take root, Alberto shimmied down under the blankets so they could kiss. And Gianluigi took to that without hesitation, his lips warmly caressing Alberto’s as he snaked an arm up around Alberto’s back. Frankly, Alberto still wasn’t so sure, but he trusted Gianluigi to know what he was doing. It seemed to mean a lot to Gianluigi, so…

He must have been getting awkward, since Gianluigi pulled back to look concernedly at him. “Did it bother you?”

“What? Oh, the stubble.” At Gianluigi’s nod, Alberto tried to think seriously about it and ended up just running his palms up and down Gianluigi’s sides. “Um, I don’t—it sort of freaked me out and I didn’t really…I don’t know. I think maybe we just…just see how it goes? Or can you control it that much? Could you reverse it? Does this mean you’ll lose your powers?”

“Mortal does not mean human,” Gianluigi said, and then looked chagrined. “That wasn’t meant to insult you. But no, I do not shed my powers. I…theoretically I could still reverse it. Later, no…but I don’t expect that I’ll have changed my mind. Alberto, I…I didn’t know that I would still be immortal, when I chose to fall.”

Alberto nodded, a little relieved. Probably not as much as Gianluigi had been expecting, given how the angel was looking at him. He slid his hands up Gianluigi’s back, then pressed their shins together; more contact tended to help calm Gianluigi down. “Okay. I’m not mad that you’re doing it, Gigi. I just love you, you know. So I don’t like it when you get worried.”

Gianluigi rolled so he was over Alberto. For a long time he looked at Alberto, brushing his fingers over Alberto’s forehead and nose and cheeks like he was mapping them. Then he bent down and kissed Alberto gently on the lips.

“I don’t worry when I’m with you. Only when you’re away,” Gianluigi said, bending down again.

* * *

The following day was Alberto’s off-day, and he got to enjoy about fifteen minutes of it, just awake enough to know he was sleeping in, but still sleepy enough to not be uncomfortable with Gianluigi’s hair kind of in his mouth and their limbs all knotted up. He could see Gianluigi’s face without opening his eyes all the way and he really liked looking at Gianluigi when the angel was still asleep. Gianluigi was just so beautiful and he looked so content, and for once there wasn’t any nervousness or irritation or confusion getting in the way of that.

Of course, then the phone rang. Alberto laid there for a couple seconds, reminding himself that weird things generally didn’t stop being weird until he walked in on Zlatan rinsing lots of gore off in the kitchen sink. Then he bolted up and grabbed for the phone, dead sure that it would be Paolo about poor mauled Andriy.

It wasn’t. It was Figo, and when Gianluigi heard the man’s voice, he stopped trying to get up and instead burrowed his face back into Alberto’s neck. Alberto wasn’t sure if it’d ever be a good idea to tell Gianluigi so, but the angel’s grumpy morning face was strangely cute.

“No, he’s here,” Alberto said. He waited, then bumped his shoulder into Gianluigi’s chest. “Um, Gigi, it’s about—oh! Shouldn’t we tell—”

Gianluigi reared up and had the phone so fast that the backwind of his movement sort of sucked the words out of Alberto’s mouth. Alberto blinked and pushed himself back into the pillows, then edged up the headboard till he could get his legs out from under Gianluigi.

“No.” The angel tilted his head so he could glower at the mouth-end of the phone. “Nothing. Don’t bother him.”

Come to think of it, nobody yesterday had brought up going to Figo, even though that was usually one of the first things they did. And Alberto had a very clear memory of Gianluigi saying that Andriy was the—so he was a demon? That might explain everyone’s jumpiness—one Figo had been asking about, so…Alberto sat on the bed for a couple moments, not really sure what he should do. In the background Gianluigi kept on talking in that flat, curt voice he used when he didn’t want to talk about something.

Alberto finally got up, since he wasn’t getting anywhere on the bed except noticing that his mouth tasted really awful. He ducked into the bathroom and went through his morning routine, then came out to find that Gianluigi wasn’t there. Before he could panic, he heard some thumping in the next room and then Gianluigi saying quite sharply that he would do so only for the sake of preventing any disastrous meddling by Figo…Alberto grimaced and looked at his desk. Eventually he focused on the terrarium, and was checking the humidity levels when Gianluigi poked his head through the doorway.

“Good morning,” Alberto said.

“Figo would like me to talk with this exorcist.” Gianluigi leaned against the jamb and looked at the phone in his hand. He turned it about a couple times, then swung into the room and put it back in its cradle with a hard click. “I have agreed to do so.”

After a moment, Alberto closed the top to the terrarium. He craned around to see where the snail had gone, found it munching away on a leaf, and suppressed his sigh. “Okay. Do you want me to drive you over?”

“It’s your off-day,” Gianluigi said a little more softly. He bent down and started making the bed. Except he did it all backwards, and then stood there with a confused look on his face when he went to tuck the ends under and found the pillows were in the way.

Eventually he shook himself and began yanking up the sheets pretty roughly—Alberto must’ve eeped or something, because Gianluigi looked over, winced and pulled at the blankets less hard. He rolled his shoulders, pushing them up against his shirt so the scars where his wings had been occasionally showed.

“I don’t mind.” Alberto took a step towards the bed, then took it back. He looked around and found the mister, then opened up the terrarium again to water the plants. “Gigi, um, is Andriy…”

“I do not know what he is doing here, but I do not feel very—peaceful about it.” Gianluigi stopped with a handful of sheets to push his forelock out of his eyes. Then he stood back and flapped the sheets up, then brought them down onto the mattress. “Paolo does not think it would be good to tell others Andriy is here, but even he won’t say whether he thinks so because it would protect Andriy or because it would make it easier to deal with him. At any rate, I—I would like you to be careful around him.”

“All right. I was going to just do the grocery-shopping today anyway,” Alberto told the angel. He finished misting and put the sprayer down, but held up the terrarium lid a little longer to keep it from getting too moist inside. “Is he a hawk-demon like Zizou?”

It probably hadn’t been a great idea to use Zinedine’s nickname; Gianluigi wasn’t so nasty about Zinedine as he was about the other demons, but that was probably because Zinedine didn’t like him either, and tended to disappear when Gianluigi showed up. Gianluigi tried hard not to make a face, but he was snapping the sheets awfully loud as he folded them under the mattress. “No. He’s not. I do not think the conversation will take long, and expect to be back at lunch.”

“So I guess you don’t…” Alberto started.

In one unbroken movement, Gianluigi straightened up, turned and walked into an invisible doorway. At least, that was what looked like happened whenever he vanished like that. Alberto didn’t actually know that doorways were involved, but he didn’t think it was a bad comparison since Gianluigi was actually traveling and…and Gianluigi was really upset about this. He’d even been changing his clothes via magic instead of pulling them out of the closet like usual.

Well, at least he really was keeping his powers, Alberto thought. Good thing, since Alberto might be getting better at hiding strange things in the storage rooms, but he felt a lot happier knowing that one of them could actually do something about those. And speaking of clothes, Alberto might as well go out now. Using lots of magic like that tired Gianluigi out, so Alberto had better get something good together for dinner.

It was cold again, but at least the skies were clear and the supermarkets were nice and warm once Alberto had run in from the parking lot. He found some nice pork chops and dropped those off at home, then was poking around in a cheesemonger’s when his phone went off. It was Alice, asking if he could come in for a half-hour to help out, since they were getting slammed and Sandro had completely disappeared.

Alberto immediately told her he could come, then went over as quickly as he could. He would’ve done that in any case, but he was a lot more worried than usual. That really wasn’t like Sandro, who no matter what was going on, always did what he had to around the restaurant.

Once he got there, he found out Paolo had gone out to run an errand an hour ago and hadn’t come back either, and he really started to fret. But first he had to straighten out the reservations because the whole lobby was full, and even though Alice was comping champagne, the griping made it impossible to think. Thankfully, that was something even he could do without thinking much these days; he hated to be snippy, but after a while all angry customers started to blend together.

When that was done, he left Alice in charge and ventured upstairs to check out things. The door was locked and he nearly fell over, he was so relieved to find that tiny bit of normality. He knocked, then stepped back as he heard footsteps coming towards the door. “Hi, I’m really sorry to bother you but I think you should…oh.”

Andriy looked back, with a puzzled expression that probably matched the one on Alberto’s face. Then he half-turned and gazed into the empty room behind him. “Did you want one of them? They’re not here.”

“Oh,” Alberto said stupidly. He tugged at his scarf.

They stood there for a couple of seconds. Eventually Andriy shrugged and bobbed his head, like people did when they wanted to get attention, but didn’t want to be loud about it like clearing the throat would be. “I’m sorry, but did you have more of the carrots?”

“Um, I’m not working today…are you hungry? Did you have lunch?” Alberto asked.

For a moment Andriy just frowned at him. Then Andriy’s face cleared and he shook his head.

“Okay, well, I don’t think we’re doing the carrots today but there’s probably some…” The other man wasn’t following him, Alberto finally realized, and he backtracked to the door. “So the food is…mostly downstairs. I mean, if you feel weird about taking Sandro and Paolo’s food. I don’t think anybody would mind if you had some of the staff meal. We always have leftovers.”

“I don’t care what I eat,” Andriy said after a slight pause. Then he moved back and gestured to the bottom of the door. “But I can’t go out.”

That made sense after a bit of thinking, and remembering of the time when Zlatan did something to the wards and made the fox-demons bounce off an invisible wall when they’d tried to run in with Figo, and then that had been an epic argument. So all right, Andriy was hungry but he couldn’t get out. “Hang on a moment,” Alberto told him.

A few minutes later, Alberto had dug up a plate of leftovers and carried it up to give to Andriy through the doorway. He would’ve come in and set it down on a table or something, but Andriy’s expression had gotten kind of odd, so Alberto stayed in the hall. Andriy didn’t move inside either, even though it would’ve been a lot easier for him to use his knife and fork if he had.

Alberto fidgeted with his scarf. “So…do you know where Sandro or Paolo went? Or Zlatan?”

“No.” It was hard to tell if Andriy liked anything, because he ate it all the same way—long look at it, then thoughtful chewing—but he was eating at a pretty good clip. “Are you supposed to be here? I have the impression that they’d rather you didn’t.”

“Well…” No, it was clear Gianluigi definitely didn’t want Alberto around, but…Alberto loved Gianluigi. He really, honestly did. But he had noticed Gianluigi didn’t like a lot of things Alberto didn’t mind and that hadn’t hurt Alberto yet. And Gianluigi hadn’t said straight out that he wanted Alberto to stay away from Andriy, but he had said Andriy wasn’t a hawk-demon so Alberto just really didn’t know what to think right now. Except what he actually knew about Andriy, which was that the man was odd but seemed all right so far. “Do you have any idea why they’re…like that? I mean, I don’t know nearly as much as they do, so probably I’m missing something, but it’s like they think you’re going to kill everyone.”

Andriy swallowed what he had and then stared over Alberto’s shoulder. “I might have. I don’t know. I don’t feel all that surprised, thinking about it.”

“Oh,” was all Alberto could say.

He couldn’t help a glance down the hall, but a soft laugh made him look back at Andriy. The other man was shaking his head as he ate, a faintly amused smile on his lips. “Maybe that’s why I don’t care that I can’t remember anything. I can’t imagine that you’d forget something pleasant.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m happy with Gigi now, but I had this girlfriend when I was a teenager and when we broke up I almost wanted to pretend I’d never met her. Even though we’d had a lot of fun…sorry, is something wrong?” Alberto straightened up and looked more closely at Andriy, who had that screwed-up horrible-migraine expression again.

Andriy didn’t respond, and Alberto almost repeated himself more loudly before realizing that that might not be the best thing for a headache. So instead he bit his lip and watched Andriy as the other man dropped his fork on his plate—it almost clattered off—and rubbed hard at both eyes. Then he dropped his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. He took a deep breath and half of another before lifting it and looking at Alberto.

“Thank you for the food,” Andriy said. He paused, then smiled at Alberto again. It was an odd sort of smile—kindly, but Andriy didn’t…he didn’t _look_ old enough to pull that smile off. He could’ve been, for all Alberto knew. “It’s all right, you know. I don’t mind any of it. So I think it must be better this way.”

“But—but what if you did something you can’t remember, and somebody’s still mad about it? And…I have no idea what that might be and it might be really bad, but maybe they don’t know everything that happened and you do. Or you did? Aren’t you worried that you wouldn’t even be able to try and explain?” Then Alberto winced and stepped back. Sometimes he really didn’t know how to shut up. It constantly amazed him that his babbling didn’t seem to bother Gianluigi at all. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry or anything. I’m just—I don’t know anything ever, so…”

But it didn’t look like Andriy was listening to him anymore. Instead the man had leaned against the doorway and was staring way, way off, at someplace that probably wasn’t even in the building. The skin around his eyes and mouth pinched again. Then he laughed to himself, eyes still distant. He handed the plate to Alberto and then turned away.

“I honestly do not care now,” he said. “I’m tired. Let them do what they will, for once.”

He closed the door behind him. Alberto stared at the wood, then cleared his throat, like that was going to be any use now. After giving himself a good shake, Alberto went back downstairs. He was going to call Figo, to see if Gianluigi was still there. If not…well, he didn’t like Sandro and Paolo being mad at him, but he liked even less being worried about them and he could ask Figo for help with that. He might be completely clueless, but he couldn’t stand around and just do nothing.

* * *

If Luís hadn’t been absolutely desperate for information, he would never have resorted to it, but nobody was answering their phone and none of his textual sources had been any help. He’d even tried summoning Henrik, but…well, for once he’d regretted his habit of introducing demons to modern technology. Prerecorded menus were even more annoying when they came from Hell.

The one good thing about the whole mess was that the fox-demons had made themselves scarce without his asking, so hopefully he and Gianluigi could skip the usual arguments about demonic pests. Granted, that was because Luís and Raúl had had a very loud fight about Raúl refusing to help him, but Luís was going to find a bright side if it killed him. Otherwise he was going to kill something, and that wasn’t exactly the proper way to greet Vatican exorcists.

God, it made the werewolf problem look positively welcoming, Luís thought as he answered the door. “Gianluigi. Thank you for—”

“I do not wish to do this and am only here because I believe that otherwise you will continue to search for information, and will cause calamity with your clumsiness,” Gianluigi said crisply and coldly. He stalked inside, looked about and then blinked when no fox-demons popped up to mock him. Of course, it wasn’t even a second before he’d gone back to seething. “Well?”

“They’re not here yet—” The knock at the door made that a lie. Not on purpose, but Luís didn’t waste much time bridling over Gianluigi’s snort. It was a true miracle that Alberto could even stand the righteous bastard, let alone adore him as much as the poor man clearly did.

As Luís got the door again, he noticed a shadow shifting out of the corner of his eye. He paused, then shrugged and pulled open the door. “Hello. Luís Figo.”

The older of the two men nodded in a reserved but friendly way, then extended his hand. He had a good grip, with heavy calluses on his fingers and palm, and several old burn scars on the back of his hand. In place of a traditional cassock, he wore the priest’s collar with a black suit of heavy, worn-looking cloth and what looked very much like black army boots peeking out from the bottoms of his trousers. “Lilian Thuram,” he said. “Thank you for taking the time to see us.”

Then he withdrew, and after a moment, the other man came forward. He was a good ten years younger but looked as if he’d stayed up for twice many nights as Thuram had lived. His nod was stiff and he took so long to put out his hand that Luís had been starting to step back into the room. But his grip was also good, and showed that he had done some proper work. “Kaká,” he muttered. “You’re the mage?”

He said that like he thought the word would curse him, unfolding a good bit of his personality unfolded for Luís. “Yes. Come on in. Based on the information I received from the bishop, I’ve done a little research but the being you describe appears to be relatively unknown. However, Gianluigi has agreed…”

As he’d talked, Luís had turned and begun to walk back into the room, but he stopped when he heard only one pair of footsteps follow him. He turned and Kaká looked blankly back at him. Then they both looked at Thuram, who was still standing in the doorway and staring at Gianluigi as if someone had hit him hard on the back of the head.

“Oh, I forget what they look like if you’re not used to…” Luís rubbed his jaw “…Father Thuram?”

“Thank you very much,” Thuram finally said. He gave Gianluigi a slight bow from the waist, then came in and shut the door after him. While doing that he happened to glance Kaká’s way, and then he looked again, long and pained.

But the other man had turned away, shaking his head and making a gesture that whatever it was, it didn’t matter. He was looking rather warily at Gianluigi, who actually appeared to be offended by Thuram’s little display.

“Your reverence is mistaken,” Gianluigi informed them. “Even if I did still number among the hosts of Heaven, it would not be myself whom you should honor.”

“Gianluigi’s a former angel,” Luís dryly explained. He got out from between the other two men and Gianluigi and took up a place by the door, near that shadow that’d twitched before. It did so again when he lightly poked it with his shoe. “He recognized the sketch—”

Gianluigi took a sudden step forward, and despite his fallen status, he still could do a more menacing loom than most demons. Thuram stiffened, apparently no idolatrous fool, and Luís idly noted that the man was quite gifted for somebody who followed the Church’s rules and didn’t even exercise half of his power.

But it was Kaká for whom Gianluigi was aiming. He felt quite ordinary, but there was something in the way he squared his shoulders against the angel’s approach. Though his fists did clench and unclench by his hips while Gianluigi carefully looked him over, and there was more bravado than real certainty in the question he quietly but pointedly asked. “How does one become a former angel?”

“You fall,” Gianluigi said succinctly. Whatever he was examining, he seemed to have had his fill of it since now he stood back, grimacing. First he jerked his head to the side, and then he turned the rest of his body just as abruptly so he was staring out the window. “He commonly calls himself Andriy. He is very old, and very powerful. You should have avoided him.”

“You…you know of him. Do you know what happened to him?” Kaká asked, taking a step forward. He didn’t seem to notice how Gianluigi’s gaze snapped around to him, but kept on with a desperate light in his eye. “What happened to him? Where did he go?”

Gianluigi pursed his lips, then snorted contemptuously down at Kaká. “You still stink of Arioch, and you want to seek out Andriy? I never understand the fascination you humans have for demons.”

“He’s…then he was a demon.” Kaká’s voice briefly dropped, as if he was speaking to himself. Then he set back his shoulders and looked up; the line of his jaw was a little less uncertain. “I want to find him so I can know what he did. I don’t seek any more than that.”

“You speak as if that’s no more than a speck of dust, when all that you seek is damnation,” Gianluigi said sarcastically.

This was going to end badly, Luís thought, and then he stepped forward to show Gianluigi out. Or he tried to, but some damn thing got under his foot and tripped him so instead he had to catch himself on the doorknob. His fall got Thuram’s attention as well, diverting the other man from his apparent attempt to get Kaká’s attention.

It was an open question whether he would’ve succeeded, since the anger in Kaká’s voice sounded damn inevitable to Luís. “Would a fallen angel be trustworthy on that subject?” he snapped at Gianluigi. “Some texts say you’re just the same as demons—”

“Do not _presume_ to lecture me about demons. Much less from some piece of writing likely set down by an even greater fool than yourself.” Gianluigi twisted back to fully face Kaká, who stood straight and stared back with the fervor of the future martyr. And for a moment Luís thought Gianluigi would be tempted—but the angel merely shook his head. He was a different thing altogether from the demons Luís knew best, so coldly secure in his superiority that he couldn’t rise above exasperation. Or maybe it was sink. “I am not a demon. Neither is Andriy.”

“Then what is he?” Lilian quietly asked. He bore up well under Gianluigi’s stare, although his power flickered about him. “I apologize for our ignorance, but—”

“Andriy was an angel.” For a moment Gianluigi stared at Lilian and Luís had been wrong about the coldness—or perhaps not. When Gianluigi turned back to Kaká, his voice was acerbic but not nearly as enraged as his eyes had been. “And yes, he did _fall_ , but it is a very different matter to choose to love beyond God, and to choose to hate Him.”

Then Gianluigi made as if to leave, but just as he reached the door, Kaká whirled about, face ashen. “‘Was’?” he called to Gianluigi’s back. “Then what is he now? _Where_ is he?”

“Damned,” Gianluigi said, apparently answering both questions. He yanked open the door so roughly that Luís saw the wood warp, then stormed out.

They all stood there and stared after him. With Luís’ experiences, he shouldn’t have been, but he was surprised. The wings seemed like an obvious clue in retrospect, but many demons had them, and…and this made sense of all the different reactions, he thought. Even Zlatan—not much could make a dent in his self-confidence, but if Luís had understood correctly, Gianluigi hadn’t been referring to an individual fall like his own. Which would make Andriy extremely old, and since he’d not been born into Hell, then he would have different—

“Kaká—Ricardo,” Thuram said sharply. Then he walked in front of Luís as Luís looked up, obscuring the view.

The door behind Luís banged open and he turned, but all he saw was Thuram’s back. But he could hear Thuram trying to get Kaká’s attention, so apparently Kaká didn’t like the idea of a renegade angel being in Hell. Odd attitude for an exorcist.

Luís looked outside long enough to reassure himself that the two men were only arguing with each other, and weren’t also going after Gianluigi. Then he went back in, leaving the door open, and was about to reach for the phone when it was handed to him. He started, then stopped and looked hard at Raúl.

“I’m sorry, but we’d rather not attract the attention of one of those if we can help it,” Raúl said. He had what looked like part of a dusty footprint on his arm. His shoulders were slumped but he didn’t look like he was going to offer any more of an apology. “The Fallen Ones are—well, they don’t really care about Hell, or anything that comes from it. It’s only a place they can use.”

“Well, thank you for telling me now.” To be honest, Luís could understand, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t still going to be irritated. Eventually he’d get over it, but right now he just wished the damn demons and angels would see not everybody had the time to wait out a centuries-long misunderstanding. “No wonder I couldn’t find anything on him.”

Raúl half-snatched at the phone, then looked faintly chagrined when Luís wrapped both arms around it. He rubbed at the side of his nose. “Luís, do you really have to look him up?”

“There is a man outside who had his power sucked out of him by this Andriy. If you’re really that worried about attracting attention, maybe you should’ve considered keeping him from getting here,” Luís muttered. He glanced at the fox-demon, then took out the phone. And couldn’t remember who he’d been going to call, damn it. “Look. I’m not any more interested in a messy death than you are, but this is what I do.”

“I know,” Raúl sighed. He pushed his hands through his hair, then grimaced. “All right. Don’t call. It’ll be quieter if I just…help. I don’t know how much I can do, though. Like I said, they’re…different.”

“Then at least he should be easy to find, shouldn’t he?”

For a moment Raúl just looked at Luís, like he really didn’t know why he bothered. Then he closed his eyes and pinched his nose again. “Maybe. There aren’t many of them left now. But why you would want to find one…”

“People are strange, strange creatures,” Luís agreed, dusting off Raúl’s arm. When the fox-demon looked up, Luís ruffled his hair and then petted the furry ear that immediately sprouted out of it. All right, he really couldn’t be mad for too long, when Raúl got that dreamy look on his face just from ear-twiddling. “How long do you think?”

“Mmm…a week? We’re moving.” After a hard struggle, Raúl’s eyes focused. “So we’re busy with that.”

Luís let go of Raúl’s ear and turned towards the door, where footsteps were approaching. Thuram and Kaká were done with their argument, apparently. “Damn. No, I understand, but…I didn’t like that mention of Arioch, and Gianluigi was damn angry, wasn’t he? I don’t trust him not to decide he can settle it all by himself again, so they should find somewhere else to stay till th—”

The phone rang.

* * *

The call turned out to be from Adrian, who wanted to know how much progress Luís was making on his little problem. Not a lot, but that was a matter of time and not difficulty; once Luís got the exorcists settled somewhere secure and made sure Milan wasn’t getting invaded by demons _right now_ , he could probably get Adrian’s case wrapped up in a couple hours. He’d been planning on doing it tomorrow, but now he was thinking he’d make a late night of it and just get that out of the way. Adrian had been polite enough, but there’d been an undertone of nervousness to the whole conversation that could get annoying very quickly.

He put the phone back on its cradle and looked up to see Raúl and Thuram doing a round of introductions. It wasn’t exactly awkward, but Raúl obviously wasn’t going to shake hands with a strange priest and Thuram obviously was picking up on that. Kaká stood off to the side, but wasn’t paying much attention. He looked like someone had attached another set of weights to the bags under his eyes, and kept rumpling a hand over his face whenever he was supposed to reply to something.

“So you didn’t mention anything about Arioch,” Luís said.

Thuram started slightly, then turned towards Luís with his brow furrowed. His face briefly cleared before assuming a regretful expression. “Oh. No, we didn’t. Arioch was the second demon, the one we presume was actually responsible for the killings. But since he was successfully returned to Hell before…” he faltered, glancing at Kaká “…he didn’t seem relevant to what we are seeing you about. I’m sorry if that was a mistaken assumption.”

“Well, I can see your reasoning but I might still look into it, if you don’t mind. Gianluigi’s…difficult, but he wouldn’t drop a name like that without reason.” Luís put the phone aside on a table, then rummaged through his desk till he found a set of keys to his old place. “To be honest it actually worries me more when he’s off-hand like that. He doesn’t…like people as a general concept. Believes we’re almost all lost causes.”

“An interesting attitude for a former angel,” was Thuram’s measured reply. “Did you need more details on that exorcism?”

As Luís straightened up, he glanced towards Raúl, who shook his head. So Luís shook his own head as he handed the keys to Thuram. “No, I think you told me enough. And I’m not saying that he is doing anything, but I’d just like to make sure. In the meantime, it might be better if you stayed somewhere with actual protective wards. These are to my old shop. It’s pretty bare, but there’s a couch left that folds out, and I haven’t undone the spellwork yet.”

“Oh. Thank you. We have accommodations at the seminary, but not on its holy ground and I was wondering if it’d be prudent…” Thuram folded his fingers around the keys, then slipped them into his trouser-pocket. Then he nodded to Raúl. “Because of our situation, not because I take any general offense to you.”

Raúl blinked a few times. Next to Thuram, Kaká briefly rose out of his silent depression to cast a long-suffering look at the other man. Something about this clearly was an old sticking-point between them, and Luís had to admit he almost liked Kaká for that little moment of humanity.

“Right. I don’t know if they mentioned this over the phone, but I cohabitate with some demons and I would be very upset if you were to try exorcising them without just cause. And by ‘just cause,’ I mean showing me them with their bloody hands still in the body,” Luís said.

“Understood.” A small but appreciative smile passed quickly over Thuram’s face. “I suppose they told you nothing about my methods. I am considered somewhat unorthodox, as I believe no one should be prejudged, including demonic beings. Certainly I’ve received a reminder today about the danger of applying that to angels.”

Luís snorted and turned back to his desk. He found his car keys, then went to get his coat. “I wouldn’t take Gianluigi personally. He’s like that to everyone except literally one man. He doesn’t even get along with other angels.”

“You’ve seen others besides him?” Thuram asked. Even though he looked at least Luís’ age, he didn’t disguise the faint note of wonder in his voice. “He’s only the second—no, I shouldn’t count them together, I suppose. He was…how do you refer to such beings? Not fallen? That seems awkward.”

“You’ve seen an angel?” Just how more complicated could this damn thing get? And while it was a relief that Thuram wasn’t trigger-happy with his exorcisms, it wouldn’t be much better if that turned out to be because he was one of those naïve idealists.

All that worry must have shown on Luís’ face, since Thuram put up his hands to show his palms. “Quite a while ago, in Turin. I don’t believe he’s involved in this matter at all.”

Probably not, Luís finally decided. Otherwise Gianluigi wouldn’t stormed out. For all the angel’s harshness, he did seem genuinely attached to Alberto and Alberto had mentioned in passing once that Gianluigi got nervous when he sensed full angels nearby. Something about thinking they might reverse Alberto’s resurrection. “Well, Gianluigi’s not the first fallen angel I’ve ever met. We’ll leave it at that, since I don’t think they’re involved either.”

“How does an angel fall?” Kaká abruptly asked. “Did—does—can they choose to do it?”

“They can. That’s one way.” Luís put on his coat, then looked at Kaká and noticed a little late the over-fervent light in the man’s eyes. For a moment he thought about just not continuing, since he didn’t like to be unnecessarily cruel, but he knew that sort of anticipation and he knew he’d get no peace if he didn’t answer Kaká. “I don’t know if…if they can be forced to fall if they actively oppose it, but there’s a case I know where they…had help. They didn’t do it themselves, but they did agree to it.”

“But the actual…the act, it wasn’t them. It had to come from someone else,” Kaká said roughly. He put one arm around himself, then lifted it to clasp at the back of his neck, which he pulled while twisting his head this way and that.

His movements rapidly became worryingly harsh and Thuram raised one hand towards him, as if to pull down his arm. Kaká flinched back, then groaned something under his breath as he switched to pulling at his hair. So Thuram brought up both hands and put them on Kaká’s upper arms, holding the other man in place and talking quietly to him.

Raúl had disappeared for a bit, but now came back with Luís’ scarf. He tossed it around Luís’ neck, then fidgeted with the ends till Luís took them from him. Then he fidgeted with his fingers. “Do you want us to watch them?” he muttered.

“Do you think I need to?”

After a long pause, Raúl reluctantly shook his head. He scratched at his ear, then grimaced and pressed his hand down hard over it. A bit of fur peeked out between his fingers, but quickly retreated, and when he took down his hand, his ear was human-shaped. “Not unless you think they’re lying. They don’t smell like they are. Kaká doesn’t make me feel easy, but I don’t think—Luís, honestly, I’m so worried about the Fallen One right now that I’m having a hard time thinking of much else. The kits are already jumpy because of the move, and…”

“All right, all right. The spellwork’s still on, anyway, so it should tell me if they do anything dangerous,” Luís said. He patted Raúl on the shoulder, then double-checked that he had his car keys. “Go do…whatever. I’m going to show these two to the old shop, and then I’ll be back. And if I get time tonight, I’ll try calling Zizou again and see if he can come up to baby-sit or something.”

“That would be so helpful,” Raúl said, shoulders sagging in relief. “He can fly, and spot them a lot faster, and then grab them before they can run away…”

Luís almost asked where Mori was, but didn’t because he really did need to get moving and destressing Raúl could easily be an all-day production. Not that Raúl didn’t need it—actually, he needed it more, so it wouldn’t take so much time when he did let himself have a breakdown—but Luís couldn’t right now. So he gave Raúl another pat on the shoulder, then went to collect Kaká and Thuram.

They were on their way out when the phone rang again, but Luís just closed the door, figuring either a fox-demon or the answering machine would get it. He wasn’t expecting any calls, and past experience had shown that unexpected emergency calls had a way of ensuring they weren’t really missed. Life usually wasn’t like in the movies, where everything pivoted on a single little incident. Important events did occur, of course, but they had to be built together to lead to a certain consequence, so there was always more than one chance to change the outcome. The real problem was taking one of those chances.

* * *

After he’d found a nest of spell-mutated termites and had squashed them all, Zlatan felt a lot better about things. He’d had to throw away his shoes, but he’d been getting bored with them anyway, and besides, it was worth the pair to realize that he didn’t need to be fucking mad at Figo, after all. He was still kind of irritated, but he’d gone over their conversation again and realized that frankly, Figo had had no idea what Andriy was either. So it wasn’t like Figo had been hiding something from him.

It was a good thing, since he didn’t have a lot of friends who knew anything about moody angels, and he needed help with _that_ again. Sighing, Zlatan sat down on the edge of the canal where he’d tossed his shoes and stared into the dark water. He had no fucking idea what he’d done there. One moment he was saying—pretty reasonably, he thought—about how maybe they should think twice about letting a fucking Fallen One stay at the restaurant when even Gianluigi was nervous about it. The next he had both Sandro and Paolo telling him he didn’t know anything about it. And when he’d just been telling off Gianluigi for questioning Paolo’s judgment. He’d be mad about how damn whipped he was, except he was sitting by a canal and kicking his socked feet being all depressed that even that wasn’t getting him anywhere. Maybe he needed to kill something else.

He wished Henke would answer his damn summonings. Damn demon was probably doing inventory again.

A couple minutes passed with the same kind of useless moody thoughts running through his head and Zlatan just got too sick of himself to sit there any longer. He got up, started for a nearby bridge, and then changed his mind and went the other way. Killing something only helped when he was pissed off, and anyway, he still had some termite shit on his pants. He didn’t want to go to his place because he’d just be pathetic some more and he knew he couldn’t go back to the restaurant yet, so he figured he might as well try seeing Figo. Could tell him that Andriy was in town, anyway, and Figo might even have something that’d get the bug guts out of his clothes. Zlatan liked these pants.

Zlatan, to be brutally honest, was a fucking airhead right now. He got all the way to the doorstep of the old shop before he realized what he’d done. Then he almost banged his head into the door, and didn’t stop himself because he felt any less stupid, but because he’d noticed the lights were on upstairs. He’d thought Figo had completely moved out.

It did smell like Figo had been here just a couple hours earlier, but the place didn’t feel like he was inside. The spellwork was all still in place and normally it sort of hummed in the background when he was around, but now it was just—there. Dormant. But Zlatan could hear someone…two people moving around upstairs, and at least one of them had enough power to know the difference between a charm and a spell.

But both doors looked fine, no sign of forced entry, and like Zlatan had noticed before, none of the spells were going off. For all that he could tell, Figo must have let them in—Figo had said something about a new client, so maybe this was them. And he’d said a lot more about them, but to be honest, Zlatan had lost his temper way before that point and hadn’t been listening.

After a moment’s thought, Zlatan pulled off his socks and stuffed them into his pockets, then used his claws to scale the wall. He bypassed all the windows and pulled himself onto the roof, where he listened till he could figure out where the people below him were. The smell of frying chicken filled the air, so he figured the one was making dinner. The other one was poking around in Figo’s old bedroom.

Zlatan went over there, got a good hold on the edge of the roof with his feet, and then leaned down to look through the window at the same time that the man was apparently about to open it. The man’s eyes bugged out and he stumbled back, then lunged for a thing at the side. A water-bottle? He sprayed a good bit all over the glass and got more over himself when the bottle’s top suddenly popped off.

The water dripped down the panes and they stared at each other for a bit. The man was maybe early twenties and was making a good case for the possibility of an attractive zombie existing. He had shadows under his eyes and hollowing out his cheeks and throat that were almost as dark as his hair, and the black funeral suit he had on made him look even more corpse-like. He also had a slightly tarnished rosary flapping around his neck, which he clutched when he noticed Zlatan looking at it.

Eventually Zlatan got tired of hanging upside. He grabbed the top of the window, then flipped himself over and down, landing his feet on the broad outside sill. Then he noticed some of the holy water was seeping out under the sill and used his socks to wipe that off. There wasn’t enough to really do more than take some skin off his feet, but he did have to walk home. “You know, that only works if the window is open? So the water can hit me?”

The man glanced at the door, then decided against calling for his empowered friend and instead took a step towards the window. He stopped to pick up another bottle, which he held like a teddy bear. “You’re not setting anything off.”

“Well, no, because I’m allowed to be here. What about you? How’d you get here?” Zlatan asked. Then he smelled something acrid and burning, and looked down to see his socks melting. Shit. He must’ve had termite guts on them, and then the holy water—making a face, Zlatan delicately flicked them off the sill to finish crisping up on the alley ground below. “For all I know you killed my friend and stole the keys to his place, and in a second I _am_ going to set off shit and make sure you suffer a horrible death.”

Apparently the man didn’t have a sense of humor or a very good sense of self-preservation, since he just frowned and stared at Zlatan like Zlatan wasn’t speaking his language. “Figo lent us this place. He’s the owner…”

“He’s my friend.” Zlatan adjusted himself on the sill, then pulled out a pebble from beneath his ass. He juggled it a little before flicking it so it bounced off the opposite wall of the alley. “You look like I just stuffed a lemon in your mouth.”

“You’re a demon.” It started out dead certain but got a tiny bit weak at the end. The one with the magic was in the kitchen, but this one didn’t seem that uninformed, and Zlatan had been showing some claw a moment ago. “The concept of friendship is inimical to unholy—”

Well, good thing Zlatan hadn’t been listening to Figo on the client part, otherwise he probably would’ve ripped this asshole a new one already. Actually, he had no idea why Figo was lending them a place to stay if they were like this. “Okay, shut the fuck up. Figo is my friend and I _know_ you don’t know me so you can take your righteousness and stuff it up an angel’s ass.”

The man raised his hand, then jerked it down while giving it a grimacing look. He kept looking down for nearly a minute before he gave himself a shake. He ran one hand through his hair, then looked up at Zlatan with an exhausted, kind of confused expression. “You are a demon, right?” he finally asked.

His voice wasn’t so hard and know-it-all now, but Zlatan still didn’t really want to answer him. Frankly, Zlatan wasn’t sure why he was still sitting here, except that maybe he was stupid and scared and stalling so he didn’t have to find out yet just how pissed off the angels were at him. Fuck. “Yeah. You know, claws?”

“I don’t know. I mean, yes, I saw yours, but I don’t know if I can tell…” the man pulled at his hair again, then dragged out a grim little smile from somewhere “…no, I can’t tell now. You should be able to detect that.”

“You can see, can’t you? I’ve met a lot of people who do pretty well at demon-finding just with that,” Zlatan muttered. He glanced at his hand, then looked again when he saw something under one nail. Then he started to pick at those little bits of dried-up guts and gravel. “And what, you just throw holy water at everybody you meet?”

For a moment Zlatan thought the man was going to toss the fucking bottle through the window. But then the man shook his head again and put the bottle down on the floor. He paused, looking around, then went off to the side. A moment later he came back with a cloth and used it to wipe down the window, and then he opened the window. It took him a second to get used to how cold it was outside, and Zlatan had to admit he _still_ wasn’t tired of the funny faces people could make. Demons generally had two expressions: smug and angry. Same for most angels too, actually.

“I…apologize. If that…offended you,” the man said. He really struggled with it, like he was turning his soul inside-out to concede that much. When he was done, he leaned on the sill and stared into the alley like he didn’t know where he was. “I’m—I was studying to be a priest, but suddenly it seems like everything I’ve learned has been wrong, demon.”

“Zlatan.” Zlatan rolled his eyes at the startled look he got. “Don’t fucking call me ‘demon’ like I’m an exhibit in a museum. Especially if you’re going to be laying all your—look, Figo’s my friend but I’m not Figo. You look like a good Christian kid, so don’t you have a confessor or something?”

“I think I’m beyond that point. I’m unprotected and talking to a _demon_.” Accompanied by waving of the hands and an anguished expression.

Sometimes Zlatan understood why Gianluigi thought people were so useless. “You’re not going to be talking to me any more if you’re going to keep being a prick about it.”

The man reared back and grabbed his rosary again. He was so sudden about it that he banged his head into the top of the window, but he just winced and didn’t put up a hand. That was the second time he’d started to make a spell-casting gesture and then cut himself off. It was a weird habit to have since he felt like a normal person and couldn’t have made it work in any case.

“Well, at least you’re not so depressed that you forget what I am,” Zlatan said dryly. He grinned at the man’s wary look. “Figo _is_ my friend. And I don’t bother with the Heaven-Hell war these days, but I’m still a fucking demon. I just do what I do now because I want to, and not because some damn devil tells me to do it.”

“What do you mean, you don’t bother with it? That’s the entire point of your existence,” the man blurted out, frowning.

Zlatan rolled his eyes and let his head fall back against the window. Talk about fucking dense. “And I bet you think the entire point of you existing is to memorize books written by monks who got their asses kicked by demons, since of course if they _won_ , they were sorcerers and evil and got burned at the stake with their books on how they did it.”

Apparently the man had some brains. He looked like he wanted to answer that, and pretty sharply, but he managed to keep his mouth shut.

“Yeah, I was born in Hell. Big fucking deal. I grew up, came here, decided I liked it a lot better. It’s _Hell_. Nobody wants to be there. And the reason it’s better here is because people are more fun than demons or angels—well, maybe except for you.” Being a demon meant Zlatan didn’t feel bad at all about making people mad. Really. He didn’t feel any guilt over this idiot. Maybe some about Figo, but Figo had known him for a while, and Zlatan wasn’t going to wallow again, damn it. “The whole soul-corrupting thing doesn’t need demons, anyway. You’re good enough at fucking up without us.”

The man abruptly turned away, then put his hand over his face so Zlatan couldn’t see his expression. “But you did. You did hurt people, before you…”

“Oh, like you’ve never hurt someone,” Zlatan snapped. “I know your type. You think you’re God’s fucking gift to earth and you throw people left and right into danger just because you’ve got some _mission_ you have to carry out. Like having a mission makes you fucking God, and lets you decide who gets to end up a martyr.”

“I didn’t do that!” the man suddenly cried out. His hand smashed down as a fist against the sill, then ground it into the wood as he took a ragged short breath. He pressed his face into the side of the window. “I didn’t—I didn’t know what he was doing.”

And that was it. He got all quiet, though his shoulders were still shaking irregularly. Zlatan shifted on the sill, then rolled his eyes and began to stoop to try and see into the man’s face, but a knock at the door stopped him halfway.

“Kaká?” came a muffled voice. “Did you say something?”

Kaká—some name—froze. He still didn’t say anything, and finally Zlatan screwed up his face and replied in Kaká’s voice, “No, I didn’t. Sorry.”

That got him a weird look from Kaká, and then an unconvinced ‘all right’ from the door, but nobody came in. After a couple minutes, Kaká managed to pull himself together enough to stand up and rub his hands over his face and head. He had been crying. It hadn’t improved his looks any.

“Whatever the fuck I said, I didn’t mean it—I’m not reading your mind or anything, okay? I’m not trying to piss you off,” Zlatan mumbled. He looked at Kaká, then crossed his arms over his chest and shrugged. “Like I said, I’m not into fucking up people these days. Unless they fuck with me first, and you…well, you’re just really annoying.”

“You’re a demon,” Kaká finally said. He was still shaking, but he was staring so intensely at Zlatan that he had to be on the upswing. “You said—born in Hell. But there are—there are some that aren’t. Aren’t there?”

“Yeah.” Zlatan wondered whether Figo had ever found anything out about Andriy, then decided that that didn’t matter. The way Kaká was, he probably needed to be told twice anyway. “You should know your apocrypha, shouldn’t you? The first demons were angels. Lucifer took what, a third of them when he rebelled, and they all were banished from Heaven. That’s not anything like being born in Hell.”

Kaká nodded distractedly, like he wasn’t surprised. He had red lines running down the far half of his face, where the wood frame of the window had dug into it. “Are they still…angels?”

“Well, they’re not the same as me. I don’t know, I don’t have to think about theology—I am theology. You’re the one who fucking studies this,” Zlatan said, glowering when Kaká looked disbelievingly at him. “What does it matter, anyway? They’ll still try to get you if they run across you—now, _there_ are some hardasses for you. You want to talk about unholy—”

“But he didn’t. That’s what I don’t understand.” It still looked like Kaká had forgotten Zlatan was there, and was talking to his hand or something. If he kept rubbing his nose like that, he was going to rub it off. “I…maybe I was too proud of myself. I thought—this magic, it gives me more responsibility than others, and I didn’t carry it like I should have. But he let me go. And—and I have done so much because I believed that demons are a plague on mankind, and I want to help people. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. But if I was wrong about him, then…”

Zlatan sighed, then raised his brows when Kaká jerked up his head and looked surprised that Zlatan was still there. Then Zlatan shrugged and put his hands down on the sill, rocking around on his ass, which was getting sore. It was a damn hard sill. “You know, they probably deserved it. Those other demons you tangled with or whatever. I’m not going to sit here and listen to you tell me what I am, but I’m not going to lie and say I _like_ demons, either. Most of them really are assholes.”

“I wish I could say thank-you, but I think you’re just making my mistakes more clear to me,” Kaká said. He had a weird little gurgle to his voice, like he was laughing, but it was pretty obvious he wasn’t feeling amused. “Lilian’s known better all along. I can’t even look him in the eye right now…I could have gotten him killed. I nearly did, and you’re right, it was because I thought I knew what was God’s will. I only thought about stopping the demon, not about him, or the people I was supposed to defend. How presumptuous of me.”

“Yeah. You’re welcome for sitting here and listening to you beat yourself over the head with yourself, like that’s not egocentric either,” Zlatan muttered. “And don’t even look like that. I’m not around to be fucking nice.”

Kaká didn’t say anything. Maybe he stared out the window or something, for all Zlatan knew; Zlatan was staring at the clouded sky. When the other guy knocked again, Zlatan clenched the sill a bit too hard and got a splinter under his nail. He worked it out while Kaká told this Lilian that he’d come out to eat in a minute. For all the proper starch in him, Kaká wasn’t that bad at the whole faking thing.

“This is what I didn’t like about my old job,” Zlatan finally said. “You’re supposed to fight and fight, and yeah, you think we just love it but there is a lot of nasty shit involved in trapping souls and dealing with angels and all that. And at the end, what happens? Even if we win, we’ve got fucking nothing. Everyone interesting would be dead and all that’d be left would be a bunch of bitter, vengeful demons. Former angels. Whatever. Anyway, not the kind of company you want for forever. Better to do something you want to do. At least then you can be sure the shit will be worth it.”

Then he tried to flick the splinter into the alley, but his nail caught on a callus and instead the bit of wood went cockeyed into the side of the window. Then fell to the sill, where Kaká frowned at it. The man put out a finger like he was going to push it over, but then took back his hand. “Do you regret anything you did before?”

“Like the souls I sent down?” Zlatan started to tell Kaká off again, but then startled himself with a laugh. He paused, head cocked, and then shrugged. “Honestly? Sometimes. But nobody went down because they shouldn’t have. They did help themselves that way…it’s not like I sit around thinking I’m a horrible, horrible demon. I’m just not going to do it again. Now I’m going to do my own thing. If that old shit comes back to bite me in the ass, I can take it.”

Kaká looked at him for a while with a strange kind of expression, like maybe he really was going to thank Zlatan. But no, the man just turned away and rubbed at his nose again. “Did—do you know…he had blond hair, and…”

“What, that Fallen One you were talking about? What the fuck do you want with him?” Zlatan asked.

“To say I’m sorry. And…” Kaká took a deep breath “…I’m not certain what else, but I think he deserves that much.”

“You’d probably be better off just learning the right things about demons and angels, and getting your degree or whatever they give you. It’s not like he remembers, anyway.” It was getting kind of late and Zlatan should get off his ass and do something about Figo and the angels. 

And he was going to, but uptight proper theology student grabbed his arm. Then yanked at it, and Zlatan was still so bemused that he didn’t bite off Kaká’s nose. He blinked at the intensity of Kaká’s stare, then looked at the man’s arm: it was vibrating, Kaká had gotten so worked up.

“What do you mean, he doesn’t remember? Have you seen him? Is he—” Kaká’s voice did a rough hiccup “—is he in Hell?”

“No,” Zlatan said, not thinking. He really just should’ve yanked his arm free and left, since that only seemed to spur on Kaká. The fucking human pulled at him _again_ , then nearly fell out of the window trying to keep Zlatan when Zlatan did wrench himself free. “No, and don’t fucking—”

Kaká didn’t really pull himself back in, but just teetered with his belly on the sill. He threw out a hand to try and stop Zlatan from climbing back to the roof, then twisted around and grabbed the top of the window like he was going to—oh, for fuck’s sake, he was trying to pull himself up. He was going to fall and either Zlatan would have to save him or Zlatan would have to say sorry, got your guest killed to Figo, and neither of those were attractive options. And anyway, it wasn’t like anyone had said don’t talk about Andriy to the human who’d…okay, honestly? Zlatan was just really thrown by Kaká’s persistence. Fucking weird human.

He shouted down that Andriy was at the restaurant and that got the attention of Kaká’s friend, since he started banging on the door and asking what was going on. While Kaká was distracted with that, Zlatan got the fuck out of there.

* * *

The airheadedness struck again, and Zlatan found himself at his own place before his stupid mind caught up with him. He was seriously losing it, he thought as he let himself in. Getting freaked out by fucking _people_ now, and now he had no socks or shoes and he still had to…

…there was somebody on his couch. Zlatan muttered so the lights came on, and Sandro twisted around just long enough to squint unhappily. Then he turned back around and huddled down under the blanket he had wrapped around himself. It had to be his mood, since Zlatan kept his apartment warm enough.

After a moment, Zlatan locked up and then stripped off his dirty coat, tossing it in the corner bin to get burned. He went into the kitchen to wash off some of the crap he’d picked up on his feet from walking across the city, then came back into the living room. Sandro looked like an even smaller blanket-dumpling than before. He frowned up at Zlatan, then scrunched his head down so the blanket lapped over his nose.

Zlatan sat down next to him and stretched out his legs till his knees cracked. He flopped back and stared at the ceiling. “You still mad at me?”

“Oh, obviously it’s about you. With all the other—” It was shaping up to be the usual rant, but then Sandro suddenly lost steam and stuck his head down into his knees. Judging from the way the blanket rippled, he was trying to hug his legs into his ribcage. “I think Paolo’s mad at me.”

“Yeah?” Zlatan said after a moment.

Sandro tried to sound sarcastic, but his voice got thin and small on him. “Well, he told me if I didn’t like it, he wasn’t going to make me put up with it. So I told him fine and left, and…and I haven’t gone back yet.”

“Since you’re sitting in my place, I kind of figured.” Great. So they were mad at each other _and_ mad at Zlatan—something had just kicked him in the shin. “Ow.”

The blanket lump reabsorbed its stubby appendage, and over it, Sandro looked angry and sad and frightened all at once. It was…Zlatan moved around and looked away. It was really weird when Sandro looked younger than him.

“Why do you still have this place, anyway? You know what Paolo thinks about it? He thinks you’re still iffy about us sometimes, and want to have a backup for when you get tired—”

“It’s not a back-up! It’s just—what, you want me to move in with you? You’d chuck a fucking cleaver at my head before the first day was over,” Zlatan snapped. He elbowed Sandro, then exhaled loudly and tossed his head back against the couch. Then he dragged his hands down over his face. “For fuck’s sake. Have I not eaten enough demons who want to fuck with you two? I’m not going to get bored. If anything, it’d be me getting fed up—”

“That’s what I said,” Sandro muttered. Then he looked at Zlatan while plumping the blanket up over his face, like that was going to protect him. Or hide the nerves in his expression.

Zlatan stared at the ceiling again. “If I move in with you, would you stop whining?”

“I don’t believe you.” It took Sandro about thirty-two seconds to get that out. “You’d—”

“Look, I have no idea why my apartment is involved, but I’ll fucking move, all right? I’m going to redo the damn shower if I do, but I’ll move in, if only so you fucking stop bitching at me. _Fuck_ ,” Zlatan said, shaking his head. “I only come back here for clothes anyway, and if you really want to know? I kept it because I thought that you’d—you’d frizz till your head popped off if I actually officially moved in and messed up your cozy little skylights and sock-drawer loft. Okay?”

Sandro’s reply was to roll over so he was sitting on Zlatan’s lap and glowering down from his cocoon. “You already redid the shower, and I wouldn’t waste a good cleaver on your face, and my head would not pop off, you over-sized—”

“Then what are you mad at me about?” Zlatan snapped, fed up. He thought he saw Sandro begin to make a move and grabbed the angel, clawing through all those layers of blankets till he had a good grip. “Oh, no. I put up with so much fucking shit _including_ this stupid ‘you saved me from Hell but I’m still not convinced’ crap, and the least you could do is tell me what it is this time.”

For a long, long moment, Sandro tried to peel off the skin of Zlatan’s face with his eyes. Then he pursed his lips, and that put some wrinkles in his previously-stony brow, and suddenly he was burying his head in Zlatan’s neck and clutching Zlatan’s shoulder. Oh, yeah. Like Zlatan was ever going to get bored when half the time he didn’t even get what was happening.

He really hated it when Sandro…stopped yelling, and got all quiet and sad. It was bizarre and Zlatan felt so damn awkward trying to pat Sandro on the back, and he hated feeling awkward.

“I’m not mad at you,” Sandro finally mumbled. He flapped at Zlatan’s arm till Zlatan stopped patting him, then began picking at Zlatan’s shirt. “For once. I thought you were right about Andriy, and that’s what Paolo and I were fighting about.”

Zlatan just looked at the far wall. Angels. What. The. Fuck. “Then why did you fucking yell at me?”

“Because I needed to yell at something and you’re easy to yell at.” Sandro rolled his shoulders, which was about as close as he was going to get to embarrassed and regretful. Then he moved his knees around, catching Zlatan once in the stomach as he cuddled closer. And it was definitely cuddling that he was doing, even though Zlatan was sure Sandro was calling it something else in his head. “And I’m just here because…because I don’t know if I can look at Paolo right now, and I don’t think he’d look here for me.”

“Thanks a lot,” Zlatan finally said. Though to be honest, he was a little relieved to be back to feeling annoyed at Sandro. “You know, he might be looking for _me_ too.”

After a moment, Sandro lifted his head to reveal a rare expression of chagrin. Then he grimaced and looked away. He propped up his elbows on Zlatan’s shoulders and started to fuss with his nails. “It’s just…I honestly don’t think you understand what seeing Andriy is like for us. You’re just worried that he might get us into trouble.”

“Well, yeah. Fallen Ones tend to do that. And…” Zlatan almost brought up Kaká, but Sandro was looking all wrung out again.

“He used to _be_ one of us. And don’t point out that we’ve fallen too—it’s not the same. It’s…” Sandro trailed off, tucking his chin into his chest. He stared at something on Zlatan’s chest, then attempted to push his hair out of his face.

When his fingers got tangled, Zlatan tried really hard not to laugh. Really. But Sandro just got frustrated and tugged more instead of pulling out his fingers like somebody sane would’ve done, and Zlatan snorted and Sandro looked at him, all narrow-eyed and annoyed. And then Sandro blinked, and laughed a little himself. It was grudging and irritated, but it was a laugh.

It died pretty quickly. Sandro went back to frowning and poking at Zlatan’s chest. “I think it’s worse for Paolo,” he said. “He’s old enough to remember Andriy before the rebellion. I came after—I only remember him as someone to fight against. But it’s still…it’s different, seeing him now that I know you don’t have to go to war, you don’t have to be only what you were made to be…I tried to kill him a few times. I have to wonder now.”

“You did the same with me, and you don’t have so much of a problem with that,” Zlatan pointed out.

“I do—did. I wouldn’t have been so suspicious of you in the beginning if I hadn’t been worried that you were looking for revenge.” Then Sandro cocked a brow. “What did you think I was worried about back then?”

Well, Zlatan hadn’t been thinking Sandro was worried at all so much as being bitchy and possessive, and yeah, that wouldn’t be a good thing to say. “Why do you always get so stuck on these old things?” he asked instead. “For once can’t you just—let it go?”

“It’s not that easy! When you spend—”

“—millennia thinking you’re _angels_ , you’re messengers of God, all that, yeah, yeah. Fine, I’m not as old but at least I fucking grew up. Found out Lucifer’s not all that, got over it, moved on. And technically he kind of made me.” Not directly, but Hell hadn’t started popping out demons till Lucifer had given it a good booting. And that was about as much as Zlatan wanted to think about that.

Sandro was looking at him like Zlatan had no brains again. “Zlatan, we—angels just come into being. We don’t—grow up. We’re already—I don’t even know what an immature angel would look like.”

“Really? I thought you saw one every morning in the mirror.” When Sandro didn’t smack him for that, Zlatan stopped grinning and started to worry. He felt his grip on Sandro slip some and shook his arm free of the blanket, then put his hand on Sandro’s waist.

After another moment, Sandro twisted around and put his head back on Zlatan’s shoulder. He flicked at a fold of blanket. “What’s having a childhood like?” he asked very quietly.

“It’s…I don’t know, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.” Zlatan sighed before Sandro could make his usual annoyed sound. “It was a pain. You’re always figuring out things too late, and it seems like everyone’s always yelling at you and trying to eat you. And you screw up a lot. Fuck, the number of times Henke was dragging me out of lava flows and things like that…” Zlatan snickered “…he says I made sure I was going to be the last damn spawn he’d help with.”

“You don’t learn either. You just— _know_ what to do.” Sandro was silent for a little bit. “And when you don’t, you don’t even know that that’s what a mistake is. Nobody tells you.”

Then he shivered, and nudged his head a little further under Zlatan’s chin. He could fold up so damn small sometimes, Zlatan idly thought, looking down at Sandro. Not much like the asshole who’d given Zlatan a few good beatings, back when they’d been at each other’s throats. That Sandro hadn’t ever seemed uncertain, and now that Zlatan was comparing the two, it was a little weird, how different they were. Except not really—the one went into the other, despite all Sandro’s protests and struggles. Maybe because of.

“I don’t think Paolo’s that mad at you. I mean, he’s still fine with me,” Zlatan said after a while.

“Which is why you’ve been avoiding him too,” Sandro mumbled.

Zlatan bounced the angel, then snorted into the irritated expression Sandro showed him. “Shut up. I was out calming myself down. Honestly, if you’re going to bitch like this, I’m not moving in.”

“You’re moving in or I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Zlatan taunted.

Sandro looked at Zlatan, all glowery again. He put up his hands really fast, like he was going to try wrenching Zlatan’s head off, and then he just ducked and pressed his lips to Zlatan’s mouth. He was shivering again, even though he put up his arms so the blanket slid to his waist, and then completely off as his fingers dug through Zlatan’s hair.

Fucking nuisance sometimes, with his knees in Zlatan’s ribs and belly, and his scratchy nails chipped from grating truckloads of Parmigiano-Reggiano every day. Zlatan twisted his head around, trying to get Sandro’s nails out of his scalp, trying to get his tongue in Sandro’s mouth. He pushed aside a bony knee with his elbow, then skinned up the back of Sandro’s shirt and rubbed his fingers down the bumps of the angel’s spine. Bony all over, for all that he had a nice cosy life, if he’d just stop fretting long enough to see it.

Part of the blanket was still trapped between Zlatan’s knee and Sandro’s leg, and when Sandro went to lift himself up Zlatan, he slipped on the cloth. He didn’t fall since Zlatan had his waist, but they went sideways, and then rolled as Sandro kept shoving, pushing Zlatan into the back of the couch. His hand scraped down the back of Zlatan’s neck, then clasped Zlatan’s shoulder as Zlatan grunted, heaved him over. Got Sandro’s fucking foot out from under his calf, accidentally bit Sandro’s bottom lip. Sandro hissed but then pressed harder, pushing his lip into Zlatan’s mouth so the bitten spot, warm with irritation, swelled against Zlatan’s tongue. He started to pull at Zlatan’s clothes.

Zlatan tossed his head again, getting it free from Sandro’s grabby strands, and then licked at Sandro’s jaw. Down Sandro’s throat while his hands yanked up Sandro’s shirt. He twisted his tongue around one nipple, then kissed the arching curve of Sandro’s chest as he worked Sandro’s trousers down the hips. Ungrateful angel wrapped his arms around Zlatan’s head and tried to crush it against his breastbone, and then got all huffy when Zlatan squeezed free, sliding lower. There wasn’t really enough couch for Zlatan, so he got his hands around Sandro’s hips and then pulled Sandro forward, under him so he could move up a bit. Still had to hook his feet over the couch-arm, but he wasn’t going to smash his head into Sandro’s thigh.

Instead he mouthed his way up it, then worked sideways once he reached the crease, tickling the soft, hairless skin. Sandro made some whiny noise and Zlatan nipped at him. Got smacked in the head, sucked hard at the same spot and got smacked in the head. Annoyed, Zlatan leaned on Sandro’s thighs and took his time nuzzling around the angel’s prick, letting it flush warmer and warmer against his cheek. Hissing air in and out of his mouth, Sandro hit Zlatan again, then slid his fingers into Zlatan’s hair, pulling almost soothingly at it. Kind of like a massage of sorts. Till Zlatan finally deigned to put his mouth over the head of Sandro’s prick, and then Sandro sank in his nails.

Angels tasted like Heaven. Not that Zlatan would know about Heaven, seeing as he’d never been and never would, but he knew the feel of Sandro’s skin against his tongue, the flavor of it, that’d be the best damn taste he would ever come across, so he might as well call it Heaven. It was how he’d know Heaven, that and their smell, but Paolo wasn’t—Zlatan grunted, coughed as he lost control of his throat for a second, then devoted himself more purposefully to Sandro. He couldn’t really think about Paolo yet, not without feeling like shit, and he didn’t want to get into that yet. Fine, he fucked up all the time, but he at least knew what he had when he had it, and right now that was his fucking version of paradise spilling out onto his tongue.

He licked Sandro clean, grinning when the angel squirmed and batted at his head, then rested his chin on Sandro’s belly. Once Sandro’s breath sounded a bit regular, Zlatan poked him in the thigh. “Well, I’ll hang around while you work out your teenage crises and all that. I’m gonna make fun of you, but I’m staying.”

“I’m centuries older than you, you smug sack of brimstone,” Sandro muttered.

“Whatever.” Zlatan twisted over till he could reach down and slide out of his trousers. He took care of himself pretty quickly and easily, since he was starting to feel kind of tired from oh, killing shit and listening to broody crap, and then put his head on Sandro’s belly again.

Sandro still had his hands in Zlatan’s hair, and he was playing with it or something. Curling his fingers around and rubbing at the strands, then letting them slip out of his hands. Once his fingertips brushed over Zlatan’s brow, no nails and soft as a light kiss.

“You still need to apologize to Paolo for being a shit,” Sandro eventually said. “You know how he gets when you storm out. He didn’t even tell you to go.”

Zlatan opened his mouth to argue, but sighed instead. “Yeah, I know. Fine, get off my fucking couch and let’s go already. I’m tired and I want to go to bed.”

After some griping, Sandro rolled off and wandered into the bathroom to tidy himself up, leaving Zlatan with the kitchen sink as usual. For all his protests, he really liked Zlatan’s bathroom, and he’d liked the new showerhead Zlatan had put in his and Paolo’s place. When Zlatan put in the three-sixty water jets, they probably weren’t ever going to be able to drag Sandro out of there, and he already took the longest shower.

The restaurant had already closed when they got there, but the second-story and kitchen lights were on. And when Zlatan opened the door, he got greeted with a strangled cat.

Not really, but that was what it sounded like. It actually was Gila, flailing and bug-eyed and—and yelling at them? “Where have you been? Why does no one ever answer my calls? I know you’re all busy and there are things you do that can’t be interrupted, but can’t you call back? Or can’t you just make sure I don’t _have_ to make the really important phone calls because I’m so bad at it and can never get anyone to answer and—”

“Gila, where’s Paolo?” Sandro snapped. “Is it about—”

“No! No, he finally came back and thank God because I’m a _maître d’_ , I don’t run restaurants, I _can’t_ run restaurants and somebody needed to do that and then you all left Andriy alone when aren’t you _worried_ about him? So why do you leave him by himself?” Gila ranted. He was—he could really work up a temper. Okay, most of it looked like hysteria and not actual anger, but the volume was very impressive. “It’s like you—”

“What about Andriy? What did he do? Where is he?” Sandro was getting pretty loud and wild-eyed himself.

Before Zlatan had to grab and shake him, Paolo walked in and Sandro actually rocked on his heels with relief. Then he started getting that guilty look, and Zlatan just shoved Sandro into Paolo so they could get to the tight hugging bit. Gila was still screeching and it was starting to hurt Zlatan’s ears.

He got about one step towards Gila when suddenly he had Gianluigi in his face. The angel must’ve come in behind Paolo. Gianluigi glowered at Zlatan, Zlatan raised his hands, and finally Gianluigi did the _sensible_ thing and turned around to calm Gila down. Well, sort of. He tried to, like, pat Gila quiet, except that didn’t work and he looked stressed about it, so Gila suddenly stopped screaming and started asking if Gianluigi was okay. Those two were so odd.

“What the fuck happened?” Zlatan finally asked.

“I went out on an errand, but got lost for a while. I was…I was upset. But when I came back, Andriy was still here.” Paolo still sounded upset. He kept running his hands up and down Sandro’s arms and looking miserable with himself. “But he was upstairs by himself. Perhaps he did something.”

Zlatan wanted to grab Paolo and bury his nose in the angel’s hair, but he was really, really trying to be the sane one, since nobody else was doing it. He tried not to yell. “Did what? What are we worried about—oh. Figo. Hey. Um, listen, about earlier? I might have been a little—”

“Zlatan, I don’t really care right now,” Figo said, coming through the doorway. He was closely followed by a man wearing a priest’s collar and squared-off tinted lenses. “Andriy’s taken off with that exorcist I told you about, and…I am putting off till later why you didn’t mention Andriy had shown up here because we need to find Kaká. Zlatan. _Zlatan_. Pay attention, would you?”

The priest had registered right away, and then ‘Kaká’ sealed it. Shit. “I thought we’d decided that Andriy was human.”

“He’s not! He—wings—” Gila got very close to incoherency, but then he grabbed Gianluigi’s arm and made an obvious effort to steady himself “—he _flew_. But Kaká ran after him, and—”

“Wait, you said Kaká went after him?” said the priest. “Of his own free will?”

“Oh, fuck,” Zlatan said, putting his hand over his face.

One of those uncomfortable pauses settled over the room. Then Figo cleared his throat. “Zlatan?”

“Well, you didn’t _tell_ me Kaká was fucking chasing Andriy,” Zlatan snapped. “And Kaká has a _lot_ of issues, in case you hadn’t noticed. I just told him Andriy was here, okay? I didn’t tell him to do anything, or to come here, or to—”

“As far as I can tell, Kaká did provoke it.” Paolo let go of Sandro and came slowly but purposefully forward, till he was standing between Zlatan and Figo and the priest. “I only saw the end, but Andriy was fleeing. He wasn’t attempting to exert any sort of control over Kaká.”

The priest pressed his lips together and closed his eyes. He steepled his fingers over his nose, pushing in with his fingertips at the top till his nails whitened. He took a deep breath, then lowered his hands. “I will try to take you at your word, and I can say that Kaká has been…similarly impulsive in the past. But I cannot say that I will be satisfied until I’ve seen that he is safe with my own eyes.”

“Of course. We have an interest in ensuring that no one’s hurt in this, too,” Paolo said. He paused, tugging absently at his shirt. “I doubt that Andriy could have gone far. He felt so much like a human…either he was extremely drained to begin with, or he would be now from repressing his powers so successfully.”

“Zlatan.” Figo stopped and pressed his hands to his temples. Then he sighed and turned away. “Next time, would you just listen to me before you storm off? That’s all I ask, really. Look, I’m going to call home and get the fox-demons on it…”

“I’m sorry!” Zlatan said to Figo’s back. He started to follow the man into the next room, but something got his arm. “I’m sorry! But I didn’t know! It’s not like I can know every fucking thing you’re…oh, fuck, okay, I screwed up. But I didn’t mean to! He was flipping out on me and I just wanted him to shut up!”

“Zlatan, I don’t think anyone really knew everything that’s been going on till just now, when we all…” Paolo offered up an ironic smile when Zlatan finally looked at him “…so we’re all a bit at fault. Anyway, I’m just glad—”

He shut his mouth pretty quick and dropped his eyes, like he thought he’d just offended Zlatan. His hand nearly fell off Zlatan’s arm as well, but two fingers hooked into the loose part of Zlatan’s sleeve and just hung on. They did slide off when Zlatan moved his arm, but once Zlatan had gotten hold of Paolo’s shoulders, Paolo looked quickly up and then put his hand back on Zlatan’s waist.

“So. So I’m moving in,” Zlatan said. His fucking mind had blanked out on him. “I don’t really use my place now, anyway.”

Paolo blinked. “Oh. Oh, all right.”

“And I was kind of an asshole earlier,” Zlatan added. He noticed Sandro drifting up behind them, looking on like he was supervising, and made a face at the angel. Then he grimaced and looked at Paolo.

For some reason Paolo was smiling all of a sudden. Smiling and wrapping his arms around Zlatan, his eyes unbelievably bright. “I got lost on the way to the post office because I was worried about you and Sandro.”

Zlatan nodded and poked at one of Paolo’s waves with a finger. He was listening, but he just…he had a hard time knowing what to say to Paolo when Paolo got this fucking beautiful.

“I’m glad you’re moving in,” Paolo said simply. He started to arch up, but then the priest asked something and Gila answered, and Paolo started, his smile disappearing. He put up his hand on Zlatan’s shoulder, then leaned in and kissed the side of Zlatan’s jaw. “I really shouldn’t have left. The mail could have waited, and then Andriy wouldn’t have been…it’s a fine thing when we argue about how dangerous he is, and then forget about him like that.”

“Yeah, well…” After a quick sniff at his hair, Zlatan reluctantly let Paolo go. He was probably going to end up searching churches again, damn it. “Whatever. We’ll find him, kick ass, and then have make-up sex.”

Paolo blushed. Zlatan knew what to do about that, and grinned as he went to go see what Figo wanted to do.

* * *

“You’ve eaten quite a bit,” Lilian said.

Ricardo looked up, then back down at his plate. A good portion of it had been cleared and the tines of his fork were smeared with the sauce, so he supposed that he must have been responsible for that. He didn’t remember, and his stomach felt no different, which was that he still seemed to lack one. But Lilian looked pleased and relieved, so Ricardo nodded. “So…”

Lilian’s expression hardened slightly. He put both hands on the back of his chair and began to lean on them, only to grimace. Then he lifted one arm and angled it against his chest as he turned away to look about the room. “It was a demon. Although keeping Figo’s warning in mind, I intend to call him and see if perhaps the demon was an acquaintance of his. But I do wonder if you’d be better served sleeping in here, and I could take the bedroom.”

“There’s no bed in it, Lilian. And you still have stitches in you,” Ricardo said after a moment. He couldn’t swallow the awkward drop in his voice and looked away when the other man glanced at him, so he noticed that his knee was shaking. He slipped his hand under his plate and pressed down on his leg. A deep breath might have been more effective, but Lilian certainly would have noticed that. “I could look downstairs. There was something covered up in the corner. Another sofa, or an armchair. It…even that would be an improvement on your usual choice of resting place.”

No laugh came, but Lilian’s reply was warmed with amusement. “True enough. But finish your dinner first.”

Ricardo looked up sharply, but held his tongue when he saw that the other man was returning to the bedroom. He watched Lilian disappear through the doorway with the door swinging nearly shut behind him. The edge of it just touched the frame, and then the door began to swing back. Dropping his head, Ricardo saw his fork nearly clatter off his plate that he was holding much too tightly.

He seized it before it fell to the floor and alerted Lilian, then looked up again. The bedroom door was not shut all the way, but it was closed enough so that the other man’s sight should be obscured. Nevertheless Ricardo was careful not to rise from his crate too quickly, or to be too hurried in taking his plate to the kitchen. For all Lilian’s seeming gentleness, he was an observant man and he had kept close to Ricardo ever since they’d left Brazil. He was doing his best to tend to Ricardo’s needs without undue forcefulness, and sometimes the sheer generosity of the man made Ricardo want to drop to his knees and strike his forehead to the floor.

But Lilian would only sit him up, and ask what was troubling him. There were others in the world who were far more deserving, Ricardo thought, and scraped harder at his plate with his fork. He watched the uneaten portions of his dinner tumble into the trash and a slick of bile curled up into the back of his throat. For a moment he wanted to drop the plate, never mind that it would shatter, and go into the next room, and confess till his whole soul tumbled out of him. _Father, forgive me, for I have sinned._

He swallowed the bile, and put the plate in the sink. After he’d washed his hands, he walked out to see whether Lilian was still in the bedroom. The other man was in the doorway, phone against his ear, and he asked Ricardo if he’d finished. Ricardo said yes and that he would do the dishes, and went back into the kitchen. He heard Lilian’s voice fade slightly as the other man went back into the other room.

In all honesty, Ricardo wasn’t certain if he’d meant that as a promise or a lie. He had one thought in his head, and it was hard to consider other matters around it, even necessary ones. He did turn on the faucet, but in doing so he noticed a long vertical crack in the wall. A closet, perhaps, but there was already a closet across from it, with a door and a handle.

This other door—for that was what it was—had no handle, but it had a hole that would fit two fingers, and it came soundlessly open at a quick tug. It proved to hide the water tank, the heater…utilities. And a ladder, which looked as if it led to the roof. The building was only two stories and they were on the second of those.

Ricardo shut the door behind him, then felt his way up the ladder till he found the trapdoor at the top. Part of it cut at his hand, but it too opened easily, as if it was used often. It did lead to the roof, and then there was a fire escape that snaked down the opposite side of the building to the bedroom.

When he was on the sidewalk, he paused and looked up, wishing he would have had time to at least thank Lilian. But he knew Lilian _would_ forgive him, without real cause and so without any effect on the gnawing within Ricardo, and so he couldn’t stall any longer. He turned and hurried down the street.

* * *

He’d left his wallet in his coat, but they’d bought lunch earlier and Ricardo had paid for it, then had thoughtlessly put the change in his trouser-pocket. It was enough to get him a taxi to within six blocks of the restaurant, and then he walked the rest of the way. By then the night had sunk deeply over the city and even the late diners seemed to have left. Only one car was in the parking lot.

But the lights were on, and as Ricardo was crossing the lot, someone came out with a large trash bag slung over one shoulder. They tossed it into the dumpster against the wall, then turned as another silhouette appeared in the bright doorway.

“No, I tried that. I only got the voicemail,” the first one said apologetically. He was a tall, brown-haired man with a nervous way of moving. “But that was an hour ago. Maybe you could try again?”

The one in the doorway shook their head, then disappeared before Ricardo could make out more than the outline of their shoulders, but those were broad enough to indicate it was another man. For a few moments the first man stood at the steps, white puffs of breath coming regularly from his mouse and nose. Then he shook himself or shivered, and went up the steps and through the door.

The door began to shut behind him and Ricardo had to break into a run for the last few meters, which he’d avoided doing so as to not attract attention. He scrambled up the steps and his foot slipped on the last one so he grabbed the jamb and not the knob, as he’d intended. But with a last burst of will, he managed to twist around and slide his foot against the bottom of the door, stopping it as it was nearly in its frame.

He’d thought he’d been quite noisy, but no one came to see what was the matter. Ricardo counted to ten, then cautiously nudged the door open and found himself looking into a kitchen. It was large and bright, with racks of copper pans hanging from the ceiling that dazzled the eye. He blinked a few times, accustoming himself, and then leaned over the threshold.

The kitchen wasn’t empty. “Andriy,” Ricardo said.

He had already been looking at Ricardo. He was at the counter, with a plate of food in front of him, and when Ricardo called his name he put down his knife and fork and frowned. No real surprise showed on his face, only a kind of mild confusion. “Yes?”

“You…you’re—” Ricardo stepped over the threshold.

Something pushed at him, as if he’d walked into an invisible mesh. Then it closed down so he couldn’t breathe, and as he was still gasping, trying to realize what he was feeling, he was thrown back out the door. Instinct made him twist around, trying to get his feet under his head, and he landed on his knees and one palm that skinned itself as his momentum pushed him over the rough concrete. Behind him he heard sudden shouts.

He started to stand, then had to stop as the world swum around him. Then he shook his head and twisted around, half-crawling half-running back up the stairs. He slapped his hands against both sides of the doorway, feeling the one slip with all the blood on it. “Andriy!”

On the other side of the room was a set of double doors and they started to swing open, but whoever was coming through them disappeared behind Andriy. His feet slid a little, as if he’d come over in a rush, and he looked down in seeming bemusement at them. Then up, at Ricardo, with that same expression of polite blankness. “Do you…are you someone I know?”

“Andriy—” Ricardo choked. His stomach finally made itself known with a nauseating twist that threw Ricardo’s head down. One of his hands slipped off the doorway and he nearly fell through, only to seize something as his loose hand snatched blindly at the air.

He drew himself back up and Andriy came with him, hand against Ricardo’s shoulder and eyes wide, then narrow, then wide. Then narrow, looking at something on the door—Ricardo’s bloody hand—and suddenly Andriy tried to wrench himself away. He took his hand off Ricardo to press against his temple. “No. _No_.”

“Andriy, I—” Ricardo dragged harder at Andriy’s shirt.

Twisting wildly, Andriy suddenly threw his weight back and for a second time Ricardo threatened to fall through the door. His bloody hand came off the jamb and he slapped it over Andriy’s shoulder for a handhold. Then Andriy rocked towards him and the hand slipped, and Ricardo stared at the red streaks it’d left on Andriy’s white shirt.

He looked up, and Andriy was staring at him with the same eyes that Ricardo had seen every night whenever he’d tried to rest. Dark and knowing and sad, and—Ricardo put his hands around Andriy’s throat, gasping, and pressed his mouth hard to Andriy’s before the spells on the door could throw him out again.

For a moment he was only forcing himself on cool lips. Then the world turned black and the wind roared in Ricardo’s ears. He spun upside-down—he didn’t know what was up—his head rang and his body seemed to dissolve. Agonizing pain tore through him, and then heat flashed through the same ragged fragments before his nerves had even taken all of the pain. He collapsed.

His elbow tapped something, and then his back did the same. It was hard and flat and he rolled over it, and then pain lanced from his neck down to his waist. But it was a different sort of pain, duller, more familiar, and he could see again and he was looking at the top of a doorway. Someone was shouting, and his head was warm but his feet were cold, and then all of him shivered as a sharp gust blew over him.

He sat up, urgency beating harder in his head than the pain in his body. He saw something white rising into the air and cried out, threw forward his hands—he felt the _wind_ rise to him, then curl downwards on top of the white thing to keep it low to the ground.

Ricardo didn’t think on having his power back. It still wasn’t enough to hold the thing—to hold Andriy down, and Andriy was rising again. So Ricardo lunged forward, then threw himself blindly up. His hand caught something and he welded his fingers around it just before he smashed into something, and blacked out.

* * *

There was a touch on Ricardo’s face. He turned towards it and it stuttered over the bridge of his nose, then pulled away as he opened his eyes. Patches of light gradually spread through the darkness, and then color.

“There’s no water except the rainwater in the gutters,” someone said.

Ricardo turned over, then groaned and half-curled as his body protested. He was lying on something hard and uneven, and it was still night and it was cold. He squeezed his eyes shut.

“And I don’t know where your friend is. You fool.” Fingers tickled through Ricardo’s hair. “You beautiful fool.”

Ricardo opened his eyes. “Andriy?”

He was squatting over Ricardo, a bloody handprint still gracing his shirt. Two huge wings curved around them, and the feathers on the edges occasionally fluttered as they kept back the night breezes. They were gray, all gray, the color of ashes, and Andriy was looking at Ricardo with a sad, wry smile on his face.

“I really didn’t know who you were. I’d forgotten—I’d forgotten what I was, even.” Andriy looked away and stopped smile. After a moment, he put down one hand and sat down, with his feet by Ricardo’s head and his knees drawn up so he could rest his arms over them. “I’ve been told you can leave Hell without having that happen, but I never had that strength.”

Everything still hurt, and the cold made the ache throb and spike when Ricardo moved, but he just managed to draw himself up. “So I sent—I did send you there. You—I sinned, but you took it and you—you went—”

“Ricardo,” Andriy said, frowning.

“I should have gone. I’m sorry, I—I should’ve gone,” Ricardo choked. His stomach hurt and he pressed his arms over it, then folded over them. It hurt more. “It was my fault. I was wrong—I wronged you. I should go. I’ll go now, I’ll—”

He was shaken by the arms. Then Andriy pushed Ricardo’s chin roughly up and Ricardo flinched by reflex. The hand dropped from his face, but only to curl around his neck and then they were pressing their temples together while Andriy whispered into Ricardo’s ear, low but relentless. “You can’t go. Yes, I lifted your sin and went to Hell, and I _went_. I cannot not have gone, you cannot go now. You wouldn’t deserve it. And I can forget about it, but no more than that.”

“But I _did_. I was—I was proud, and I didn’t listen, and—”

“I wanted to go. And I would have gone in any case, with or without your sin,” Andriy said, as if Ricardo hadn’t spoken. “Taking your sin only made it faster. Faster, and it saved you, and that had nothing to do with the state of your guilt.”

Ricardo tried to breathe in and the air stuck to the roof of his mouth. He closed his mouth and…he didn’t understand. He closed his eyes, trying to think, and something warm and wet pressed against the side of his jaw. For a moment he was still, and then he threw himself backwards. His raw hand scraped over the rough ground and he cried out, snatching it up. He took a ragged breath and twisted it into his shirt, then looked up at Andriy.

“Well, I didn’t think it was that kind of kiss you gave me.” Andriy sat back and threw one arm over his knees. He grinned a threadbare grin at Ricardo. “I’m not good. I didn’t do it because it was part of some greater plan, or even out of general benevolence. I saved you because I was going to break your neck so Arioch wouldn’t have you and then I fell in love with the curve of your cheek.”

The blood slowly seeped through Ricardo’s shirt, turning cold as ice. He looked down at his hand, then back at Andriy. Then he looked wildly around them, and finally saw that they were on a roof. On—he recognized the spire and the flying buttresses. They were on top of the cathedral.

Somehow his breathing began to slow, even though his thoughts were still disordered and incomplete. He rewrapped his hand in a fresh part of his shirt-tail, then started when he heard a soft sound. But it was only the rustle of Andriy’s wings as Andriy, grimacing, resettled them in place.

“What are you?” Ricardo asked, still looking at them. “Now, I mean. Before you were…you were a fallen angel, and now…”

Andriy didn’t answer. When Ricardo looked at him, he had put his hands behind him and was leaning back on them, staring up at the small circle of sky between his wings. He shifted his foot and the loud scrape kept Ricardo from asking the question, and then dropped his head to look soberly at Ricardo. “That’s the problem, I suppose.”

Ricardo opened his mouth, then exhaled slowly.

“There is a little folktale. It’s very popular in many parts of the world,” Andriy said. He paused, then pushed himself up to clasp his arms about his legs again. “A very clever, very wicked man thinks it’d be a shame to go to Hell but would be nice to be rich without working hard, so he calls up the Devil and makes a pact with him. And then he tricks the Devil and gets out of it. But when he dies, he’s too bad to be let into Heaven, and the Devil doesn’t want him either, because nobody wants to be reminded about their failures. So he has to wander the earth forever.”

For a little while Andriy was silent, and they sat across from each other. The blood stopped coming from Ricardo’s palm, but the print of it on Andriy’s shoulder was as freshly red as before.

“Except I’m not clever, and I didn’t want to be sent back.” Andriy rolled one shoulder and tilted his head. He brushed at something on his knee.

“Why not? It’s—”

“I’m tired,” Andriy snapped, raising his head. He paused, then sighed and put down his knees so he was sitting crosslegged. “I was—no, I’m still tired. There are only a few ways you can kill an angel, even a fallen one, and…it was one way. Easier than the other ways. I thought so, at least. I—it’s a little funny, to find out this way God has a sense of humor. He won’t forgive me but he’ll let me out of Hell for finding something earthly to love.”

Ricardo pulled up his hurt hand to his belly, then put his other hand down on the ground. He paused, feeling the slight tingle of power that pervaded the cathedral, and then he pushed himself towards Andriy. When Andriy stiffened, Ricardo stopped and began to think again—but no. Demon or angel or fallen angel, it didn’t make any difference to what he’d shown Ricardo. And since Ricardo could not undo Andriy’s time in Hell, he had to give it the…the respect it deserved.

When Ricardo was about a hand-span away, he heard Andriy’s wings snap a little in the air and he stopped. “I,” he started, but his mouth was too dry. He wetted his lips. “I don’t think that that’s humor. I think that that’s—”

“Love?” Andriy said incredulously. He started to rise, hesitated, and then sat back down with a little hollow laugh. “Well. Love. Perhaps. I’ve been among you humans long enough to see what love can be. But where is the mercy and the forgiveness He lavishes on you? Love—oh, I still love Him. If you want to talk about love.”

“But you rebelled with Lucifer.”

Andriy looked sharply at Ricardo. One of his wings slashed at the air, buffeting that side of Ricardo with a harsh wind but stopping short of actually striking Ricardo. It hovered in place for a few minutes before Andriy finally swung both wings out behind him. He looked down at the ground, then snorted and laid down on his back. The very tips of his wings wouldn’t lie flat, but twitched and fluttered with every breath he took.

“I saved a good priest, didn’t I?” Andriy finally said. Quiet, to himself. “I rebelled—yes, I did. Lucifer was set over us and he said this and we said yes. But we’d always said yes to him. He was seated at God’s right hand—he could feel _like_ God. I said yes to him. I followed him. I didn’t think about it. He called and I followed, which was all I’d ever known, and then all I could know if I wanted to live. We’re not made to think for ourselves—it’s interesting, don’t you think? That He let the ones who _did_ , who didn’t listen to Lucifer, that He let them stay with him.”

“I wouldn’t be a good priest.” After a moment’s consideration, Ricardo nodded and knelt by Andriy. He felt something brush his back and twisted around, but it was only Andriy’s wings. “You’re right. I assume more than I know, and don’t admit when I’m making no more than an assumption.”

Andriy looked at him, that bitter restlessness suddenly absent and only sadness left. And it was such a sadness—it hadn’t been the humanness of that that had bothered Ricardo, but the pain of it. It wasn’t a pain that Ricardo knew how to alleviate, and that had disturbed him because he had thought so simply that one only needed to rid the world of evil forces. If one prayed enough, and fought enough demons…and so everything else had been a distraction, a waste of time. Lilian’s obsession with asking after how someone would feel was pointless, since Ricardo knew how they’d feel _after_ the evil had been banished. Happy.

But back then he hadn’t known what evil truly was. He did now: evil was pain. The form didn’t matter.

He leaned over Andriy and stretched out one hand. His hurt one, with half-dried crusts of blood on the fingertips that he noticed too late. When he began to draw back his hand, Andriy sat up and so Ricardo stopped. They were almost touching, his hand and Andriy’s chest; Andriy looked down at Ricardo’s hand, then made as if to twist away and Ricardo put his fingers on Andriy’s breast. Then, when Andriy didn’t move, on Andriy’s neck. And then he moved it towards Andriy’s cheek, but he saw that dried blood had come off on Andriy’s neck and was going to brush it off when Andriy suddenly took him by the wrist.

“You don’t feel what you think you feel for me,” Andriy said. “You feel sorry for me, and guilt over me. You haven’t had the time to feel anything else, and—and I cannot stop looking at the way your jaw flows into your throat, but I am tired of fighting a war I no longer believe in. I am tired of pretending to be what I am not.”

“Then why do it? You—if neither Hell nor Heaven can claim you, then you can choose what you want to do. You can choose to stop pretending.” Ricardo put up his other hand and wrapped it around Andriy’s wrist, pressing it between his own hands. “You can—”

Andriy smiled and leaned forward, as if he was—and then he jerked his hand free. His nail scratched across Ricardo’s scraped palm and made Ricardo flinch away, and then Andriy stood up before Ricardo could stop him. He looked up at the sky, which had turned dark purple. “You’re human. You would say that. You’re used to knowing you have a choice. I’ve been a demon for so long that I don’t know how to be anything else. I should have stayed in Hell.”

“You’re not a demon,” Ricardo said heatedly, scrambling to his feet. “You’re an—”

Then Andriy looked at him, cool and expectant, and Ricardo couldn’t finish. Once he would have, sure of himself, but he’d gone too far past that, even with anger and fear driving him.

“But you’re not a demon,” Ricardo did insist. He took a quick step towards Andriy, then seized Andriy’s shirt with both hands when Andriy was slow to move back. “You’re not. Yes, I know very little, but I think I know now what you would call a demon, and you’re not that.”

“I have spread such misery in this world that you can’t even imagine—”

“—but I can think you’re more than that. I can think you can change, because I’ve seen you change and because I’ve seen you _want_ to change. I don’t—” Ricardo’s throat tightened but he forced his voice out “—I don’t believe God is the way you say. I don’t know that he is, and I don’t know that you really do either. Everything I’ve seen so far has told me that no one really knows, no one at all. But I know that there is good in the world, and I know that you can be something different—I _believe_ that. I do.”

Andriy grabbed Ricardo’s arms. Hard and tight, as if he was going to shake Ricardo again, but instead he pulled Ricardo up and stared at him. And Andriy was angry, and then sad, and then so angry—and suddenly his eyes were clear and calm. He smiled at Ricardo and let go, then patted at Ricardo’s arms to dust out the wrinkles in Ricardo’s sleeves.

“You have such faith. I haven’t known that in a long time. I haven’t been faithful in so long…but I can love, for some reason. And it’s no mercy,” Andriy said, still smiling. “You’re too faithful for me.”

And his wings swept up, sucking the air into a tumultuous swirl. Ricardo staggered, nearly fell and then threw up his arms too late. His nails caught, slipped, caught again, and then came free as Andriy lifted away from him.

“But I will still be faithful!” Ricardo shouted. He ran till he hit the balustrade, and then he clutched at the stone out of instinct as he strived to see. Dawn was breaking fast, and the sun—his eyes stung. “I will wait! I will—”

It was too bright. He had to close his eyes, and then he couldn’t bring himself to open them again, even when he put up his hands to push at the lids. Something pressed into his forehead and he felt out its shape: a feather. He dragged his hands down till the feather brushed his mouth.

“I will be,” he whispered.

Below him, someone called his name. Lilian.

* * *

“Paolo said there aren’t many left. The early fighting killed many, more have died since, and Lucifer cannot call more into being as God can do with his angels—that is why true demons came into existence, presumably.”

Ricardo nodded absently as he stood back from his suitcase. He looked over its contents, mentally running down his list, before frowning as he spotted an absence. But a quick look around placed his stake of juniper wood half-hidden under the suitcase’s top. He pulled it out and tucked it between two sets of pants, then began the list again.

“Apparently it’s even odd to see three fallen angels in one place, as we have here. Figo has a theory that that was what attracted Andriy, when he was…thrown out, so to speak. So—Kaká.” Lilian’s tone uncomfortably but firmly demanded that Ricardo look up.

“Yes?” Ricardo asked, raising his head. 

But Lilian only looked at him, concerned but so…uncertain, as the man never was. There were new lines about Lilian’s eyes and mouth, and for a moment Ricardo had to drop his gaze, ashamed at having treated the other man so badly once again.

Then he breathed in deeply and looked up. “Lilian, I’m fine. I swear by the saints that this time I told you everything that happened, and…and truly, I don’t have any plans to sneak away and get myself into trouble again.”

For a long time the other man didn’t speak or move. They had talked for a long time about Andriy—it had taken a while to get Ricardo off the cathedral roof without attracting attention, even with three fallen angels, a mage and assorted demons—and during it Lilian had scolded Ricardo quite comprehensively, before embracing him so tightly it’d threatened Ricardo’s ribs. Then it had seemed that they’d covered everything, but Ricardo was very aware of how much he’d abused Lilian’s trust in the past week and he was uncertain as well.

“Why don’t you want to find Andriy? If I understood your feelings correctly…” Lilian fell silent again, then turned abruptly away and began to tidy an already perfect stack of books Figo had lent him.

It took a few minutes for Ricardo to understand that Lilian’s discomfort arose not from lingering anger but from tact, and possibly embarrassment. Although Ricardo wouldn’t claim to know what embarrassment looked like on Lilian, since he had never seen it before. “Oh. Oh…but if he doesn’t wish to see me, then I don’t wish to force myself on him. And it seemed clear how he felt—I’ve caused him enough pain. When I no longer do, then I’ll see him.”

“Kaká,” Lilian said carefully. He rested his hand on one book. “If he’s in such distress, then can you be certain that he wouldn’t need…aid? And also…this is sometimes hard to remember but such beings think on a different timescale than we do.”

“I don’t think he’ll forget that I’m mortal.” Ricardo flipped over the top of his suitcase, then leaned over to run the zipper around the edge. When he straightened up, he found Lilian with hand half-raised and lips parted around the beginnings of another delicate question. “Lilian, I know that he forgot once and we don’t know if that was his doing or…something else. And I know…I know I don’t know if he’ll ever want to see me again. But—but I believe that I will. And I know that I truly understand now what you meant when you described the difference between knowledge and faith.”

Lilian lowered his hand, then lifted it again. Then he pressed his lips together. After another moment, he turned back to the books, but this time he picked up one and began to leaf through it. He didn’t look up when Ricardo dragged the heavy suitcase off the bed and across the room, or when Ricardo grimaced and shook his bandaged hand.

“I haven’t packed up the first-aid kit yet. It’s still by the sink,” Lilian said. He turned another page. “And we’re in no hurry, Kaká. It’s only across town to the seminary.”

“You haven’t booked a flight yet?” No blood was coming through the wrap and the pain was already fading, so Ricardo forwent the first-aid kid.

After he’d read a few more pages, Lilian turned around and looked at Ricardo. “No. I have to admit, now that I know you’re…at peace with yourself, I’m still tired from our trip to Brazil. I was…I’ve had an offer from the Archbishop of Milan to stay and teach, and it’s tempting. It would give me time to study with Figo—who is a man with a _fascinating_ book collection—and the Archbishop is willing to enroll you in the seminary.”

“That’s very generous of him, but…if you need to rest, then of course you should. But—but I don’t want to enroll,” Ricardo said awkwardly. He grimaced at his feet; he’d been practicing this discussion, but he had also thought they’d not have it for another few weeks yet.

Lilian frowned. “You only need another semester.”

“I know, but—Lilian, I still want to work with you but I don’t wish to be a priest now.” Ricardo glanced at the other man, then risked leaning against the wall when all he saw was a puzzled interest in Lilian’s face. “I don’t think I’d be suited for it.”

“I would beg to differ,” Lilian said strongly. He paused to put down his book, then came across the room to put his hand on Ricardo’s shoulder. “Especially after these last few weeks. As I told you, I will not have you blaming yourself anymore. At least not without also seeing what you’ve learned, and how you’ve changed. You would be a credit to the Church.”

It took several hard swallows for Ricardo to finally clear his throat for speech, and even then he didn’t dare more than a few words. “Thank you, Lilian. That…means a great deal, your opinion.” He managed a smile when Lilian gave him a last squeeze on the shoulder, but had to raise his hand when the other man turned away. “But I still…I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can. I know you’ve reconciled what’s happened with your beliefs, but what I’ve found—what I’ve found is that my beliefs may go beyond what the Church holds. And I’m not like you. I cannot wait for it to work out.”

“I think we still have a few misunderstandings about what I believe,” Lilian said after a moment. Then he smiled, and reached out to lightly touch the same shoulder he’d just patted. “But there’s no need to apologize, Kaká. It is unfortunate for the Church, but you must do what you feel is right. I’ll still hold out hope that you may change your mind.”

“Thank you,” Ricardo said, heartfelt. He hadn’t lied to the other man about being fine, but all the same, it was a relief to know that he would still have Lilian. And their work—his love for that had come through undiminished, only altered a little because he better understood why he loved it. “But I don’t think I will.”

Lilian nodded, but still looked skeptical. “Once upon a time you thought all demons were the same, and now…I’m sorry, that was tactless of me.”

“No. No, it’s true, and you can—we can talk about it, Lilian. It’s no secret.” Then Ricardo pushed himself off the wall, and went to go see if they’d left anything besides the first-aid kit in the bathroom. “But it’s not the same. I—I don’t know that it will work out, even when we see each other again. I know that he loves me, and I know that I am learning to love him. But I don’t know if that will be enough. I only have…faith.”

He looked into the bathroom for a while. Eventually he stirred himself and collected the first-aid kit, and was turning to go when he remembered why he’d gone there in the first place. Ricardo checked the room, then went back into the bedroom.

“I’m human,” he said quietly. “So human…I make so many mistakes. And I think all I can do is to try to know a mistake when I see one. I don’t think I can presume to tell others when they are saved and when they are not.”

Lilian came forward again. “That’s not all that priests do.”

“I know, but that’s what I would do, if I was a priest. I think you’ve thought that more than once.” Ricardo laughed, then put the kit down on the desk by the books. He tapped his nail against the plastic cover before standing back, blinking away a sudden stinging in his eyes. “I am faithful, but I’m still trying to find my own way, Lilian. And I don’t know if here I’ve even done the right thing—I only believe, and…”

“It will be enough,” Lilian told him. Then the man took Ricardo by the shoulders and turned them to face each other. He looked Ricardo in the eye and he was certain, and Lilian sometimes erred as well but never in the way that he moved forward. His mistakes were mere corrections. “Ricardo. It will be.”

He pulled, and initially Ricardo resisted, thinking the packing—but suddenly he was tired, and Lilian’s broad shoulder was so sturdy. He laid his head on it and closed his eyes, letting the other man embrace him. He believed, he did, but for a moment he would rest. His faith would still be there when he rose again.

**Author's Note:**

> The idea of Kaká and Thuram teaming up as demon hunters originally comes from lemongrasstea (LJ).


End file.
